Letter from the Editor: January 2015

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Sometimes in the process of putting together an issue you get to see something that makes it all worthwhile. It takes a lot of time and effort to compile our annual Top Doctors package. Rather than use an outside organization to supply us with a list, we do it ourselves. Nearly a year before you see the finished product, Amanda Boyd Walters, our director of editorial operations, starts the process: making contact with three different state medical boards, tweaking and re-tweaking the survey we distribute, reaching out to public relations and marketing offices at numerous area hospitals and medical offices, and generally beating the bushes to make sure our survey includes the most appropriate specialties and reaches the widest number of physicians possible to give you the most comprehensive snapshot of Greater Cincinnati doctors doing top-notch work. It’s not a thankless task—we get a good deal of positive and constructive feedback every year from the medical community and readers—but the reason we do it can get swallowed up in the details.

There are a lot of details. Reminders to mail, surveys to count, and a huge list of individual doctors’ names, specialties, office locations, and referral statuses (900 this year) to fact check. We also profile several local professionals making advances in the ever-expanding universe of medicine. This year that meant delving into the tricky science behind concussions, brain cancer drugs, knee replacements created using a 3D printer, and a cool little program at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center where toys are transformed into motorized vehicles for kids who can’t walk. In the middle of our photo shoot at Children’s, we saw the impact that these advances can make. A little girl whose legs couldn’t carry her was able to chase her older brother around the room in one of those retrofitted toy cars. It was a bright, shining reminder that technology can make a person feel whole again. Her smile that day was proof, as well as a reminder to us of why we bring Top Doctors back each year.

 

Illustration by Lars Leetaru
Originally published in the January 2015 issue

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