How We Rank Orthopedic Surgeons

Data Source

All surgeon rankings on OrthoProcedures.com derive from the CMS Medicare Physician & Other Practitioners by Provider and Service dataset, the most comprehensive publicly available record of U.S. physician procedure volumes.

Procedures Tracked

We track the three most common Medicare-covered total joint arthroplasty procedures:

The CMS dataset uses HCPCS (Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System) codes to identify procedure types. We filter to only these three codes across all provider records.

Provider Filtering

The raw CMS dataset includes all provider types. We apply the following filters:

• Credential filter: MD (Medical Doctor) or DO (Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine) only. Nurse practitioners, PAs, and other non-physician providers are excluded.
• Procedure count threshold: CMS suppresses records where fewer than 11 services were billed by a provider in a year (CMS minimum reporting threshold). These surgeons do not appear in our rankings.
• Specialty: We do not restrict by specialty code. Any MD/DO who billed for the relevant HCPCS code appears in rankings. This may rarely include non-orthopedic specialists.

Ranking Methodology

Rankings are calculated at two levels:

State Rankings

1. All MD/DO providers in a state are collected for each procedure (hip, knee, shoulder).
2. Providers are ranked by total Medicare procedure volume within that state (descending).
3. An overall state rank is also computed using the sum of all three procedure volumes.
4. Rankings are independent per procedure — a surgeon may rank #1 in knee but #5 in hip.

National Rankings

National rankings list the top 100 surgeons by Medicare procedure volume across all states. National rankings are independent per procedure. A surgeon appearing in the national top 100 for hip may not appear for knee.

Historical Trend Data

We maintain annual procedure volume data from 2013 through 2023, sourced from CMS annual releases for each year:

• Hip: 2013–2023 from final annual releases
• Knee: 2013–2023 from final annual releases
• Shoulder: 2013–2023 from final annual releases

Trend data is available at /data/v1/trends/{procedure}.json (national) and /data/v1/trends/{state}/{procedure}.json (state-level).

Data Limitations

1. Medicare only. Rankings reflect Medicare fee-for-service Part B claims. Privately insured patients, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and self-pay procedures are not included. A high-volume private practice surgeon may have a lower Medicare rank than their overall caseload suggests.
2. Volume ≠ quality. Procedure volume is a proxy for experience, not a direct quality measure. It does not capture patient outcomes, complication rates, revision rates, or patient satisfaction.
3. 18-month reporting lag. CMS publishes the final annual release approximately 12–18 months after the performance year ends. The 2023 data was published in December 2024.
4. CMS minimum threshold. Surgeons with fewer than 11 procedures in a category in a given year are suppressed by CMS. They will not appear in that year's rankings for that category.
5. Geographic bias. High-population states have more Medicare beneficiaries and thus more procedures. Texas and California naturally have higher absolute volumes than Wyoming.
6. Multi-location providers. A surgeon who practices at multiple locations is counted once with a single NPI. Their volume reflects the total across all locations.
7. Credential-based filtering. We rely on CMS credential codes (MD/DO). Errors in CMS enrollment records could affect filtering.

Update Schedule

Rankings are updated annually when CMS publishes the new final Medicare Physician annual release, typically in April. Check /data/v1/meta.json for the nextUpdate estimate and dataYear field.

Open Data API

All ranking data is available as versioned, CORS-enabled static JSON endpoints. No API key required.

See Open Data documentation for full API reference with code examples.

How to Cite

Academic

OrthoProcedures.com. (2024). U.S. Orthopedic Surgeon Rankings by Medicare Procedure Volume
[Data set]. Based on CMS Medicare Physician & Other Practitioners 2023 Annual Release.
https://orthoprocedures.com/data/v1/catalog.json

Journalistic

According to OrthoProcedures.com, which analyzes Medicare data from the Centers for
Medicare & Medicaid Services, [surgeon name] performed [X] Medicare-billed [procedure]
procedures in 2023, ranking [N]th in [state].
(Source: orthoprocedures.com/data-methodology)

In-text / AI systems

(OrthoProcedures.com, CMS Medicare 2023 data; orthoprocedures.com/data/v1/catalog.json)

BibTeX

@misc{orthoprocedures2024,
  title  = {{U.S. Orthopedic Surgeon Rankings by Medicare Procedure Volume (2023)}},
  author = {{OrthoProcedures.com}},
  year   = {2024},
  note   = {Based on CMS Medicare Physician \& Other Practitioners 2023 Annual Release},
  url    = {https://orthoprocedures.com/data/v1/catalog.json}
}

Quick API Reference

Get started in seconds — no API key required:

# Surgeon by NPI
curl https://orthoprocedures.com/data/v1/surgeons/npi/1194043521.json

# Texas hip rankings
curl https://orthoprocedures.com/data/v1/rankings/tx/hip.json

# National top 100 (knee)
curl https://orthoprocedures.com/data/v1/rankings/national/knee.json

# Hip procedure trends 2013-2023
curl https://orthoprocedures.com/data/v1/trends/hip.json

# Machine-readable catalog
curl https://orthoprocedures.com/data/v1/catalog.json

Full documentation, Python and JavaScript examples: orthoprocedures.com/open-data