Orthopedic patients don't shop the way med-spa or dermatology patients do. The pathway is fear + referral: a PCP says 'you probably need to see a knee guy,' and the patient immediately searches to vet whoever was named. What they screen for is specific — did people get out of pain, was the recovery honest, did the surgeon and the imaging happen without a three-week wait. A thin or stale review profile reads as risk, and risk is fatal on a decision this size. This is also where you beat the hospital-employed group next door. Health-system surgeons often have their reviews diluted across a giant enterprise profile. An independent orthopedic practice that owns a surgeon-specific, procedure-rich review presence can out-trust a bigger name — and win the referred patient who was 'sent' somewhere but hadn't committed yet.

Four leaks, almost universally: 1. Reviews live at the practice level, not the surgeon level. The patient searching 'Dr. [Name] knee replacement reviews' finds nothing, so they judge you on the corporate 4.1 instead of your real outcomes. 2. The ask never happens at the right moment. The best review comes 2–6 weeks post-op when the patient is genuinely thrilled to be walking again — but by then they've left the building and nobody asked. Front-desk 'please review us' at checkout catches them still in pain. 3. Nobody separates the surgical win from the wait-time gripe. Long imaging and scheduling delays generate the 1-star reviews, and they sit unanswered, framing every surgical prospect who reads them. 4. Sports-medicine and non-surgical patients — the high-volume, fast-recovery crowd — are never harvested at all, even though they're your easiest 5-star source and they feed the surgical funnel later.

Reputation in orthopedics is an operations problem, not a plea. The system Surge builds runs on the surgical and rehab timeline: **Capture at peak gratitude.** Trigger review requests at the post-op or physical-therapy milestone when the patient can suddenly do the thing they couldn't — the 6-week ACL check, the first pain-free round of golf, the walk without a cane. That's when a two-tap request converts. **Route by surgeon and procedure.** Direct reviews to surgeon-specific profiles and seed procedure language ('rotator cuff,' 'spinal decompression,' 'total knee') so the review itself ranks for the exact term the next patient searches. **Intercept the wait-time complaint.** Route friction (scheduling, imaging delays, billing) to a private service-recovery path before it becomes a public 1-star, so your public profile reflects surgical outcomes, not front-desk logistics. **Respond like a clinician.** Every review — good or bad — gets a HIPAA-safe, human reply. Prospective surgical patients read the responses as closely as the reviews; a calm, professional answer to a hard review often converts better than a wall of 5 stars.

Drop your practice URL into the Surge Score™ generator and within about sixty seconds you'll see — specific to your orthopedic practice — your current rating and review volume against the local orthopedic groups you actually compete with for referrals, which of your surgeons have exploitable review gaps, how your profile stacks up for high-intent procedure searches, and the estimated surgical referral revenue that thin reputation is costing you each month. If you'd rather talk it through, book a strategy call and we'll walk your market and your review profile live. No sales pressure, and the Surge Report is free.