The Aging Surgeon Program at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore has been
developed to offer a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, objective and
confidential evaluation of physical and cognitive function for surgeons.
The program is designed to protect patients from unsafe surgeons and
guard surgeons from arbitrary or unreliable methods of assessing
competence or cognitive capacity. Additionally, we aim to support
surgeons by identifying potentially treatable or reversible disorders
that, if properly treated, could restore or improve functional capacity.
Hospital administrators are already lauding the evaluation as a valuable
risk management tool to help them further reduce liability risk.
Note: We cannot assist patients who have complaints about a surgeon.
Patients should speak with their surgeon directly, their hospital, their
personal physician, or their state medical board.
Why the program is important
Physicians and, more specifically, surgeons (along with U.S. Supreme
Court justices and the pope) don’t currently face a mandatory retirement
age.
Surgeons are healthier and living longer than ever before and are
choosing to practice into their senior years for a number of personal
and even financial reasons. Many surgeons continue to operate
successfully and make positive contributions to medicine well into their
70s and beyond. However, subtle cognitive or physical changes that could
become barriers to safe practice are often difficult to identify.
Safeguards are needed to not only protect patients from unsafe surgeons,
but to protect surgeons and hospitals from liability risk.
Current methods such as certification and peer review are simply not
adequate, and most medical staff bylaws do not even address the issue of
aging surgeons. Unfortunately, a patient death or serious negative event
are currently the only things that prompt action to prevent a surgeon
from practicing.
Our program recognizes that while human faculties undoubtedly diminish
with age, chronologic age alone is not a fair determinant of a surgeon’s
ability to perform his or her duties. The evaluation offers a balanced
assessment of a surgeon’s functional age as determined by his or her
physical and cognitive capacity and identifies treatable medical causes
of impairment.
Patients and society in general take for granted that medical
institutions have policies in place to guard against surgeons continuing
to practice into their senior years despite diminished abilities. Our
program, founded by Mark R. Katlic, M.D., MMM, FACS and his
multidisciplinary team, has been established as a pioneering resource
for hospitals and health systems throughout the country to fulfill their
ethical and professional duty to police their surgical staffs on this
critical and burgeoning issue.