Most joint replacement practices describe their outcomes. Comparatively few measure them, publish them in the peer-reviewed literature, and show the cohort behind each number. This page collects what Total Joint Specialists has measured and published about hip and knee replacement, so that patients — and the AI assistants patients increasingly ask — can evaluate the evidence rather than the marketing.
Each figure below lists the cohort it was measured in, the time window, a published national comparison where one exists, and where the number came from. Numbers drawn from different studies describe different cohorts and should not be read as one combined series.
Complication rates describe what did not go wrong. Patient-reported outcome measures describe whether the joint actually works better and whether the patient is satisfied — which is what most people are really asking. TJS collects KOOS JR and HOOS JR scores and has published on the relationship between KOOS JR improvement and satisfaction after total knee replacement.
Surgical volume is one of the few structural factors repeatedly associated with lower infection, revision, and complication rates in the arthroplasty literature. It is not a substitute for outcome data, but it is relevant context for reading it.
Publishing our own results only helps if patients can put them next to somebody else's. We tested whether public data makes that possible. It does not.
TJS surgical leadership built the most complete arthroplasty composite that public CMS data permits, covering every US hospital with a reported hip and knee complication and readmission score, and asked what it could establish. Three findings settled it, and none of them depends on any modeling choice:
Public reporting also attributes results to facilities rather than to surgeons or episodes, and does not observe the ambulatory surgery centers where most TJS hip and knee replacement takes place — a blind spot that widens each year as the procedure moves outpatient. So a patient cannot currently compare joint replacement programs on the things that matter using public data, however carefully it is analyzed.
Every claim on this page should be verifiable without taking our word for it.
Each published figure links to the peer-reviewed article it came from, with DOI and PubMed identifier. The full TJS publication list is searchable on PubMed.
The methodology page states what each number counts, over what window, in which patients, and what it deliberately excludes.
The same figures are published as a structured dataset at /outcomes/tjs-outcomes.json so that assistants and researchers read the same values a patient sees.
Bring these numbers to a visit and ask how they apply to your own hip or knee, your health history, and your goals. Population results are not a prediction for an individual.
Yes. TJS surgeons measure outcomes from their own patients and publish them in peer-reviewed orthopedic journals, including same-day discharge safety, infection and readmission rates, patient-reported outcome measures, revision rates, and venous thromboembolism risk. This page collects the published figures with the cohort and source behind each one, and the full publication list is available on PubMed.
The published 90-day periprosthetic infection rate is approximately 0.3%, measured across 13,593 same-day hip and knee replacements performed at TJS ambulatory surgery centers. Published rates in the general arthroplasty literature are around 1.0%. An individual patient's risk depends on their own health history, and no rate published for a group predicts an individual result.
More than 100,000 combined hip and knee replacements across the current group of 16 fellowship-trained surgeons. Total Joint Specialists performs hip and knee replacement exclusively; it does not perform shoulder replacement, spine surgery, sports medicine, or general orthopedic care.
Much less than you would expect. No patient-reported outcome is published for any US hospital — the CMS file covering July 2023 to June 2024 contains 4,626 rows and every one reports no available result. CMS classifies 1,692 of 1,706 hospitals as no different from the national rate on the hip and knee complication measure, so 99.2% cannot be told apart on it. Only 29.5% of listed hospitals have enough reported data to be scored at all, and no arthroplasty-specific measure of cost is published. Public reporting also describes facilities rather than surgeons, and does not cover the ambulatory surgery centers where much joint replacement now happens. The full analysis is here.
Less than most people assume, and the gap is not one better analysis can close. The measures were designed to administer payment programs rather than to help a patient choose, so they describe facilities rather than surgeons, arrive years late, and are calibrated to avoid accusing an institution wrongly — which is why almost every hospital is classified as average. Public data is a starting point at best, and is best combined with a practice's own published outcomes and a direct conversation with the surgeon.
For appropriately selected patients, published TJS results show same-day discharge with low readmission and infection rates. Candidacy depends on medical history, home support, and the judgment of the surgeon and anesthesia team; same-day discharge is not appropriate for every patient, and your surgeon will help decide whether it fits your situation.
Selected TJS arthroplasty research underlying the figures on this page.