MGH
Orthopædics honored with prestigious awards
Many MGH clinicians and researchers are members of national and international
organizations that represent their chosen field of expertise, and often
travel to annual meetings to represent the hospital. During one such meeting
recently, members of MGH Orthopædics were honored by their peers
from around the world with two prestigious awards, a recognition of their
outstanding work in the field.
During the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopædic
Surgeons (AAOS) held recently in Chicago, Harry E. Rubash, MD, chief of
Orthopædic Surgery at the MGH, was presented with the Orthopædic
Research and Education Foundation's (OREF) Clinical Research Award —
along with former MGH colleagues Kevin Bozic, MD, of the University of
California, San Francisco, and Dan Berry, MD, of the Mayo Clinic —
for their paper "Using Clinical and Economic Outcome Data to Influence
Health Policy in the United States: The Case of Total Joint Replacement."
The AAOS annual meeting is the world's largest meeting of orthopædic
surgeons and allied health professionals with the latest information on
orthopædic treatments, advances and research, as well as socioecomomic
issues and trends in orthopædics. The OREF is the only independent,
surgeon-driven organization supporting research in the musculoskeletal
area. The Clinical Research Award is given to recognize excellence in
orthopædic clinical research.
"It is always wonderful to attend these meetings to represent our
department and the institution among orthopædic surgeons and researchers
from around the world," says Rubash. "Receiving this award was
truly a once-in-a-lifetime honor for us and the MGH. It was the first
time the department received this particular award, and we are very proud
of this accomplishment."
The paper detailed a multi-center study that analyzed differences in patient
characteristics in resource utilization between primary and revision total
joint arthroplasty procedures. Significant differences were found, which
had important implications regarding the classification, coding and reimbursement
for these procedures. Hospital reimbursement is the same for all of these
procedures regardless of the differences, which often result in significant
hospital financial losses. In 2004, the research team presented their
findings to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which resulted
in a dramatic change in policy to revise the diagnosis and procedure codes
for reimbursement of these procedures.
In addition to the Clinical Research Award, a research team from the MGH's
Harris-Orthopædic Biomechanics and Biomaterials Lab was presented
an award for the best poster presentation, chosen from 650 posters displayed
at the annual meeting. Titled "A Minimum Five-Year Follow-up of Highly
Cross-linked Polyethylene Liners in Total Hip Replacement," the poster
was co-authored by Jeffery Geller, MD; Charles Bragdon, PhD; Meridith
Greene; Murali Jasty, MD; Dennis Burke; Harry Rubash, MD; Andrew Freiberg,
MD; William Harris, MD; and Henrik Malchau, MD. The poster detailed a
five-year study that evaluated the durability of polyethylene hip replacements
in 77 patients. This is the first five-year study to document the remarkably
low wear rate of the polyethylene replacement, developed at the MGH.
Below, Rubash, second from right, with
colleagues receives the OREF Clinical Research Award
