Former UW orthopedic surgeon joins competing clinic founded by former SSM Health surgeons 

According to an article in the Wisconsin State Journal, Dr. Tom Zdeblick, who resigned last year as head of UW–Madison’s orthopedics department and retired from the university, has joined Orthopedic and Spine Centers of Wisconsin, a competing, independent group. 

Zdeblick stepped down as orthopedics chair at UW after Dr. Robert Golden, dean of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, denied Zdeblick’s plan to start an ambulatory surgery center largely owned by him and other UW doctors.  

Shortly after  Orthopedic and Spine Centers of Wisconsin opened, UW Health and SSM Health made an announcement that UW Health orthopedic surgeons would start operating at SSM Health’s St. Mary’s Hospitals in Madison and Janesville.  

Dr. Jason Sansone, the leader of the independent practice, told the Wisconsin State Journal in November that the group plans to build a specialty orthopedics hospital and an ambulatory surgery center in Dane County within two years.  

Additional surgery centers are planned, likely in the Janesville and Baraboo areas and possibly elsewhere in the region. Meanwhile, SSM Health also has been planning to build an ambulatory surgery center for orthopedics, in Sun Prairie, the organization said in a lawsuit in November against Sansone and Dr. Brian Keyes, another of the departing surgeons. 

Orthopedic and Spine Centers of Wisconsin is made up of 11 former SSM Health orthopedic surgeons. The group is being managed by Phoenix-based Healthcare Outcomes Performance, or HOPCo.