When I decided it was time for hip surgery, I had a secret weapon: KT (she who must be obeyed) is one of the top orthopedic physician recruiters in the country. Vetting surgeons is literally her job. So before I ever sat in Dr. Buller’s exam room, she ran him through the same checklist she uses at work.
You don’t need a recruiter in the family to do this. Every step below uses free, public information, and most take less than 15 minutes. Here’s KT’s checklist.
1. Confirm board certification and fellowship training
Start with the basics: is the surgeon board certified, and did they complete a fellowship in your specific surgery?
Board certification. You can check this yourself in a minute on the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery’s Verify Certification page.
Fellowship. A fellowship is an extra year of specialized training after residency. For a hip or knee replacement, look for a fellowship in adult reconstruction or joint replacement (arthroplasty). Then research where they trained, because fellowships are not all equal.
Dr. Buller completed his fellowship at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York City. It is one of the top orthopedic fellowships in the country. The surgeons training there do an enormous volume of surgery!
Your surgeon doesn’t need an HSS pedigree. But you should know where they trained and be able to find out why that program is respected.
2. Check how many surgeries they do
Volume matters. Surgeons who do a procedure often tend to get better results, and Medicare publishes free data showing how often each doctor performs it.
Where to look: the Medicare Physician & Other Practitioner Look-up Tool from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Medicare’s Care Compare site has also started showing procedure volume right on doctors’ profile pages, a feature it added in January 2024 (CMS). It’s an easier place to start than the full look-up tool.
3. Read the patient ratings
Patient reviews on sites like Healthgrades, Vitals and Google, along with the star ratings many health systems post on their own doctor profiles, tell you what it’s like to be this surgeon’s patient. Read for patterns.
4. Find out where they have practiced A surgeon’s career path tells a story. Check their bio on the practice or hospital website, and their Care Compare profile, which lists hospital affiliations (CMS).
5. Do a quick Google search
Spend 10 minutes searching the surgeon’s full name plus “MD” and “orthopedic.” Then try the name with words like “lawsuit” or “complaint.”
6. Search for malpractice claims and license discipline
This is the step most people skip, and in Indiana it’s free. Check three places:
| What to check | Where | What you’ll find |
| Malpractice claims | Indiana Patient’s Compensation Fund database | The provider’s specialty and the number of malpractice complaints filed against them (Indiana Department of Insurance) |
| License status | MyLicense.in.gov | Whether the license is active and in good standing |
| Disciplinary actions | Indiana PLA Discipline Search | Any board discipline; updated weekly |
License status and discipline are separate searches in Indiana, so do both. Outside Indiana, start with your state medical board’s license lookup. A claim isn’t proof of malpractice. Many are dismissed, and busy surgeons who take on hard cases may have one or two over a long career. What matters is the pattern: several claims, claims that ended in payments, or any discipline on their license.
7. Make sure they operate at a top institution
You’re not just choosing a surgeon. You’re choosing the hospital, its nurses, its anesthesiologists and its physical therapists. Check the hospital’s hip and knee replacement ratings in U.S. News & World Report, and its overall star rating on Medicare’s Care Compare.
High-volume joint replacement centers tend to have practiced teams and well-oiled recovery routines. Remember that benchmark from step 2: a hospital doing more than 200 joint replacements a year.
The bottom line
An hour of homework can change how your surgery and recovery go. Then trust your gut in the exam room: the right surgeon listens to your goals. Finding someone who agrees to a plan together makes all the difference. He had me at unlimited running and simultaneous double hip replacements.