Todd Albert Shaking Things Up at HSS

Orthopedics This Week—December 2, 2014

Five months in we decided to see how Todd Albert, M.D. is managing the 107 surgeons at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS). Brought on board in June 2014 as Surgeon-in-Chief and Medical Director, Dr. Albert is doing some restructuring and empowering those around him. He tells OTW, "This hospital is flat out amazing, with incredible staff who provide a phenomenal patient experience. That being said, there are always ways to improve any situation. My major initiative has been to strengthen the service chiefs (arthroplasty, spine, sports, etc.) using what I call ‘distributive leadership.'

"We will be hiring a new Chief Scientific Officer in the next six months and he or she will be an internationally acclaimed basic scientist who possesses the sensitivity to conduct and oversee translational and clinical research. We perform 30,000 surgeries annually, meaning that we touch so many patients and thus are well positioned to define best practices in orthopedic surgery. My aspiration is that HSS will be THE center for national trials. We already have the bandwidth, but to reach this goal we need a platform at the service level. To this end, I will push for accountability in clinical research and the development of functional registries for each service. We want to provide the tools and give authority to the surgeons to collect baseline data that can be used to run the registries and therefore run large trials. This may require an additional Clinical Research Chief who may be identified and brought on board in concert with or shortly after the new CSO."

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