The Effects of Surgeon Workforce Diversity on Total Joint Arthroplasty Patient Demographics

Racial disparities in total joint arthroplasty (TJA) utilization are persistent and well-characterized. Improving surgeon workforce diversity may attract patients from diverse backgrounds. We sought to determine whether the recent hiring of an arthroplasty surgeon of underrepresented minority (URM) background in a predominantly non-URM arthroplasty practice was associated with increased patient diversity.

We retrospectively reviewed all primary and revision elective TJAs by six arthroplasty surgeons at our institution from September 2022 to September 2023. Primary outcomes included patient age, sex, and race/ethnicity. Secondary outcomes included patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) at preoperative and 3-month postoperative follow-up. Comparison cohorts included the following: (1) a recently hired URM attending surgeon; (2) a recently hired non-URM attending surgeon; and (3) four senior non-URM attending surgeons. Unpaired t-tests were used to compare means for continuous variables and chi-squared tests for qualitative variables.

Overall, 2,101 patients were included, and 168 patients were included in group 1 (URM surgeon), 75 in group 2 (non-URM surgeon); and 1,858 in group 3 (non-URM senior surgeons). Compared with groups 2 and 3, patients within group 1 comprised a markedly greater proportion of female, Black, and Hispanic/Latino patients (64.8%, 33.3% and 59.7%, respectively, P < 0.01). Racial and ethnic demographic differences persisted when examining patients treated by the non-URM division in the year before the hiring of the URM surgeon. Subgroup analysis of URM patients showed markedly improved SF-12 mental scores for URM patients treated by the URM surgeon compared with those treated by senior surgeons (P < 0.05).

Compared with an experience-matched non-URM surgeon and non-URM senior surgeons in the same division, the URM surgeon saw a markedly greater proportion of minority patients in their first year of practice. Hiring diverse orthopaedic faculty may represent a viable strategy for improving health care utilization for minority patients in arthroplasty practices.