A surgical pioneer Is Gone
The world lost a renowned healer, visionary innovator and businessman/entrepreneur, and the Forbes family lost a good friend when Dr. Richard Rothman died recently at age 81.
Dr. Rothman was a peerless surgeon, who, during the course of his 50-year career, dramatically changed the way doctors treat patients with deteriorating joints. When he began to focus on joint replacement, patients with bad hips essentially had two unacceptable options: get a walker or have surgery, which probably wouldn’t do much good. Dr. Rothman was a pioneer in modern joint-replacement surgery, including the invention of a total-hip-replacement system that’s become one of the most prominent and widely used systems in the world.
Starting with four employees and one office in 1970, Dr. Rothman built a medical empire, the Rothman Orthopaedic Institute, which today features some 200 physicians (including my son-in-law Dr. John Anderson) in nearly 40
offices. Dr. Rothman, always a strong advocate of patient-centered care, believed that multiple branches would make it easier for patients to receive the relief they needed, instead of making them travel to him.
The Rothman Orthopaedic Institute is the leading orthopedic research organization in the world. It is also a preeminent practice for orthopedic fellowships, annually receiving thousands of applications, and it ranks second among orthopedic groups in grants received from the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Rothman’s institute generates annual revenues of more than half a billion dollars, but money was never his motivator. His aim was to provide patients with compassionate, convenient and highquality—yet affordable—medical care. Few have accomplished those worthy goals better than he.
Until his recent retirement Dr. Rothman was still performing surgeries two days a week, in addition to maintaining a full schedule that included mentoring young doctors, serving on a variety of boards and even teaching medical students in China. He estimated that he had personally performed more than 50,000 total knee and total hip replacements; however, the successful surgical procedures made possible by his years of devotion to his profession are many times that number.
That legacy will continue, as the strong team he led, including CEO Mike West and president Alexander Vaccaro, M.D., carry on his work. Dr. Rothman will be greatly missed by his family, friends, colleagues and the countless patients he helped, but we will be inspired by—and grateful for—his well-lived life.