Fox 12 Good Day Living’s Stephanie Kralevich recently visited ROC’s Tualatin location to catch up with James Ballard, M.D.
Dr. Ballard discusses changes he’s witnessed with 23 years in practice and what he thinks is the best thing about his work at ROC.
Video Transcript:
Stephanie Kralevich:ROC stands for Regenerative Orthopedic Center, and today we are at the Tualatin location to meet internationally recognized, board-certified orthopedic surgeon Jim Ballard.
We are with Dr. Jim Ballard, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon here at ROC. Thanks so much for talking to us.
Dr. James Ballard: Oh, it’s great to have you guys over.
Kralevich: You do a lot of knee replacement.
Ballard: I do a lot of hip and knee replacements. That’s kind of all I do, yeah.
Kralevich: Yeah, you’ve been doing total hip replacements and total knee replacements for quite some time.
Ballard: Yeah, I started surprisingly, 23 years ago here in Portland, and I’ve seen a lot of incredible change in our industry. The way we do it has changed, the types of implants we use have changed, how we know people can function afterwards has changed. One of the biggest changes is we don’t even do these operations in hospitals anymore, which I think is kind of shocking to people when they hear they’re going to have their hip or knee replaced and go home three hours later and not be in a hospital environment.
Kralevich: And you are a pioneer in this industry. Can you talk about the change you made in your replacement?
Ballard: When we decided to move this procedure away from hospitals, that’s probably one of the biggest things. And we were the first group, probably this side of the Mississippi to establish a center that’s just dedicated to doing hip and knee replacement.
Kralevich: Tell us about your patient population.
Ballard: My patient population is kind of the patient population you’d see out at the store. I mean, it’s people that are young, people that are super old, so kind of everybody.
Kralevich: And what are the signs that someone needs to get this kind of surgery sooner rather than later?
Ballard: That’s a good question, because people sometimes come in and see me and they find out from their doctor they have arthritis, and they figure, oh, I need to have an operation. But arthritis is one of the only health problems that you don’t have to have fixed. You get to have it fixed. So my appendix goes bad, I have to have my appendix out. When my knee goes bad, you only have to have it fixed when your quality of life isn’t good. So when your quality of life goes down, then we can reestablish that by doing a joint replacement.
Kralevich: Well, let’s talk about how you improve the quality of your patients lives. What do you hear from them after a total knee replacement or a total hip replacement?
Ballard: To be honest, I have a really fun job. People come to me because they’re in pain and they can’t walk, and then when you fix that, to come in and have them be so happy and lifted, and their pain is gone, their life is different, and their outlook on their life is different. That’s a really unique opportunity.
Kralevich: Dr. Ballard, thanks so much for talking to us.
Ballard: Oh, you’re welcome. Thanks for coming.
Kralevich: To learn more about orthopedic care and recovery at Regenerative Orthopedic Center, visit rocpdx.com.
