Orthopedic Surgery.
Northgate represents orthopedic surgeons across spine, sports medicine, joint replacement, hand, foot & ankle, pediatric, trauma, and shoulder & elbow.
Your career in orthopedic surgery.
Orthopedic surgery is a discipline of forks. Employed at an academic medical center or partner at a private group. Hospital-employed or PE-backed platform. Trauma call or no trauma call. ASC ownership or none. The decisions a senior arthroplasty surgeon makes about a robotics platform are not the decisions a sports surgeon makes about team coverage. We treat the sub-discipline and the practice model as the unit of the conversation, not the line on the certificate.
The work within orthopedic surgery.
We are deliberate about the sub-discipline and the practice model behind it. The market for a spine surgeon coming out of a hospital-employed contract is different from the market for a sports surgeon evaluating a PE-backed partnership. The sub-disciplines below guide our approach to orthopedic representation.
- Spine Surgery
- Cervical, thoracolumbar, deformity, and minimally invasive. Approach training, navigation/robotics platform fluency, and call structure tend to drive the conversation.
- Sports Medicine
- Arthroscopy of the knee, shoulder, hip, and elbow. Team coverage relationships and PE-backed partnership economics are often the larger lever than base compensation.
- Joint Replacement
- Hip, knee, revision, and increasingly outpatient/ASC arthroplasty. Robotics platform, implant relationships, and ASC ownership equity decide most senior moves.
- Hand & Upper Extremity
- Microsurgery, peripheral nerve, congenital, and trauma. A small universe; fellowship-trained hand surgeons sit at the intersection of orthopedics and plastics.
- Foot & Ankle
- Total ankle, reconstruction, sports foot & ankle, and diabetic limb salvage. Volume of total ankle and academic affiliation tend to define the senior pool.
- Pediatric Orthopedics
- Spine, hip, sports, trauma, and limb deformity. Almost exclusively children’s hospital and academic; the universe of pediatric ortho fellowship-trained surgeons is small.
- Orthopedic Trauma
- Level I and II trauma centers. Call burden is the dominant negotiating variable; protected non-clinical time and call pay structure decide most conversations.
- Shoulder & Elbow
- Arthroplasty, sports, and complex revision. A growing senior pool as reverse shoulder volume scales; ASC strategy increasingly part of the offer.
The orthopedic surgeon we represent.
We are most useful to orthopedic surgeons who are seven to twenty years into practice, board-certified, fellowship-trained in their primary sub-discipline, and at a real inflection point. A partnership track that has reached its decision point. A new ASC opening across town. A robotics platform a hospital is committing to or walking away from. A call burden that has stopped working for the household.
The conversation tends to work less well for trainees, for general orthopedists exploring without a sub-discipline anchor, and for engagements where the institution will not discuss block time and call structure before the interview.
- Tenure
- Seven to twenty years post-fellowship, with at least four years at the current practice. Earlier-career surgeons better served by their fellowship network.
- Fellowship discipline
- A primary sub-discipline that defines the case mix. Mixed-bag generalists are workable for community engagements but rarely fit the program-leadership conversations.
- ASC ownership posture
- Whether you currently own or rent ASC time. Whether the next move requires you to leave equity. This shapes the entire offer construction.
- Practice-model preference
- Employed, private partnership, PE-backed, or academic. The right next role is rarely a coin flip among these. We ask early.
- Reason for the conversation
- A specific reason this season, not general curiosity. The reason itself usually shapes the right next role.
The rooms we work in.
The settings we consider for orthopedic surgery career opportunities.
- Academic Medical Centers
- Integrated Delivery Networks
- Orthopedic Private Groups
- PE-Backed Orthopedic Platforms
- Children’s Hospitals
- Level I & II Trauma Centers
- Specialty Orthopedic Hospitals
- ASCs & Outpatient Joint Programs
