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SPINE
SURGEONS
Top spine hospitals 3 years running: Healthgrades
By Marcus Robertson
H
ealthgrades recognizes 100 hospitals each year with its
America's 100 Best Hospitals for Spine Surgery award, but a
select group has landed on the list three years in a row.
Healthgrades uses Medicare inpatient data to measure performance,
and its methodology adjusts for each patient's risk factors, including
age, gender and medical condition.
e following 38 hospitals have won Healthgrades' America's 100 Best
Hospitals for Spine Surgery award in each of the past three years:
1. Eisenhower Medical Center (Rancho Mirage, Calif.)
2. Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center (Los Angeles)
3. Kaiser Permanente San Jose (Calif.) Medical Center
4. Los Robles Regional Medical Center (ousand Oaks, Calif.)
5. Palomar Medical Center Escondido (Calif.)
6. Saint Agnes Medical Center (Fresno, Calif.)
7. Santa Barbara (Calif.) Cottage Hospital
8. Medical Center Of e Rockies (Loveland, Colo.)
9. Sky Ridge Medical Center (Lone Tree, Colo.)
10. Christiana Hospital (Newark, Del.)
11. AdventHealth Ocala (Fla.)
12. AdventHealth Orlando (Fla.).
13. Doctors Hospital Of Sarasota (Fla.)
14. HCA Florida Brandon (Fla.) Hospital
15. Ocala (Fla.) Regional Medical Center
16. Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point (Hudson, Fla.)
17. St. Joseph's Hospital (Savannah, Ga.)
18. University Hospital (Augusta, Ga.)
19. Ascension St. Vincent Hospital - Indianapolis
20. MercyOne North Iowa Medical Center (Mason City, Iowa)
21. Kansas Spine and Specialty Hospital (Wichita, Kan.)
22. Anne Arundel Medical Center (Annapolis, Md.)
23. Frederick Health (Frederick, Md.)
24. Mercy Medical Center (Baltimore)
25. e Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore)
26. Abbott Northwestern Hospital (Minneapolis)
27. Cox Medical Center South (Springfield, Mo.)
28. Saint Mary's Regional Medical Center (Reno, Nev.)
29. Albany (N.Y.) Medical Center Hospital
30. Hospital For Special Surgery (New York City)
31. Crystal Clinic Orthopaedic Center (Akron, Ohio)
32. Tulsa Spine and Specialty Hospital (Tulsa, Okla.)
33. Heritage Valley Sewickley (Sewickley, Pa.)
34. Saint omas Hospital for Specialty Surgery (Nashville, Tenn.)
35. Medical City Fort Worth (Texas)
36. Valley Baptist Medical Center - Harlingen (Texas)
37. St. George (Utah) Regional Hospital - River Road
38. Lewisgale Medical Center (Salem, Va.) n
Dr. Ernest Braxton
performs 1st awake
robotic procedure of its
kind in Colorado
By Carly Behm
E
rnest Braxton, MD, performed the first awake
robot-assisted transforaminal lumbar interbody
fusion in Colorado, according to a Feb. 20 LinkedIn
post.
Four things to know:
1. In a Feb. 21 Instagram post, Dr. Braxton said awake
minimally invasive TLIF procedures are a treatment
option for spondylolisthesis patients with intractable
symptoms. The awake procedure lets him avoid the risk
of general anesthesia, he said.
2. Dr. Braxton and neurosurgeon Muhammad Abd-
El-Barr, MD, PhD, are working on a paper about their
experience with robotic awake spinal fusion, according to
LinkedIn.
3. Dr. Braxton completed his first awake spinal fusion in
2016.
4. Dr. Braxton is a spine surgeon with Vail (Colo.) Summit
Orthopaedics and Neurosurgery. n
