AAOS Installs New Leaders During Annual Meeting

The House of Orthopaedics has a new headmaster.
 
David D. Teuscher, M.D., became the 83^rd president of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) this week, assuming the reigns from his predecessor, Frederick M. Azar, during the third day of the organization’s 2015 Annual Meeting (March 24-28) in Las Vegas, Nev.
 
A partner and past president of the Beaumont Bone & Joint Institute in Beaumont, Texas, Teuscher also serves as a team physician for Lamar University’s NCAA Division I athletic teams. After earning his bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and medical degree from the University of Texas Medical School in San Antonio, Teuscher completed an internship and residency at the Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio, Texas.
 
Teuscher served in U.S. Army operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, receiving the Meritorious Service Medal and Distinguished Honor Graduate Flight Surgeon Wings. He entered private practice in 1993, after 13 years of military service, ending his military career as chief of surgery at Fort Sill, Okla.
 
He has long been an active member of AAOS, serving on the Board of Directors and as chair of the Board of Councilors from 2011 to 2012. A 2004 AAOS Leadership Fellow, he has led and served on numerous Academy project teams and committees. As second-vice president of AAOS, Teuscher chaired the board project team that structured a strategic plan (Vision 20/20) to serve as a guide for AAOS decision-making through the year 2020.
 
Teuscher also is past president of the Texas Orthopaedic Association and the Jefferson County Medical Society, and serves on the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and the State Bar of Texas Board of Directors. He previously served as the vice-chair of the Texas Youth Commission and as a member of the governor’s tax reform commission.
 
Improving surgical safety, ensuring value for musculoskeletal care, unity, and expanding access to the Academy’s educational programs are among Teuscher’s priorities as president for the coming year.
 
“Each member of our House of Orthopaedics has unique needs and wants. And everybody has a different way of getting things done,” Teuscher said in his first official presidential speech. “But we are more alike than we are different. United we win, divided we will fail. We must not fail.”
 
Teuscher also urged members to become more politically active, claiming the agency’s “key contacts and personal relationships” are making a difference with federal lawmakers. He lauded the growth of the Orthopaedic Political Action Committee (PAC) during the last decade, noting the entity currently is the largest medical PAC and the 10^th largest PAC overall. Yet only 31 percent of AAOS members have made contributions to the PAC. “Resolve this year to join the PAC,” Teuscher told a standing-room only crowd inside a spacious Venetian/Sands EXPO ballroom. “Don’t be in the lowest 69 percent of the class. Get off your big fat wallet and put your money where your mouth is.”
 
Teuscher leads by example, having helped pass landmark medical liability reform in Texas, including passage of an amendment to the state constitution to make the reforms permanent. He also has been involved in numerous successful legal challenges on scope of practice issues and helped regulators write Workers’ Compensation rules for a rational, national-model physician fee schedule unhitched from Medicare, with an annual automatic increase for inflation.  
 
Assuming Teuscher’s former position as first vice president was Gerald R. Williams Jr., M.D., of Philadelphia, Pa. William J. Maloney III, M.D., the Elsbach-Richards Professor of Surgery, and professor/chairman of Stanford University School of Medicine’s Orthopedic Surgery Department, slipped into the second vice presidency position.
 
Williams is a board-certified shoulder surgeon at Rothman Institute in Philadelphia. He has served in various faculty positions since 1990 and currently is the John M. Fenlin, Jr., M.D., Professor of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery at The Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University.
 
After earning his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pa., Williams received his medical degree, with honors, from Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia. He began his postgraduate training with an internship in orthopedic surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, where he later completed a residency in orthopedic surgery and a one-year fellowship in shoulder surgery.
 
Williams previously served in several volunteer leadership roles at the AAOS including a two-year term on the Board of Directors and chair of the Continuing Medical Education Courses Committee, as well as a position on the Committee on Shoulder and Elbow (1999). Active in more than a dozen professional societies and councils, he has served as the president of the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons and has been a member of the Philadelphia Orthopaedic Society (president, 2002), the Pennsylvania Orthopaedic Society (president, 2009), and the Mid-Atlantic Shoulder and Elbow Society (co-founder and president 2012-2014).
 
Maloney has served on numerous AAOS committees, including the Council on Education. He currently serves as co-chair of the AAOS/American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery Combined Task Force on Maintenance of Certification. Previously, he was chair of the American Joint Replacement Registry Board of Directors, and on the boards of directors for the Knee Society, the Hip Society, the Western Orthopaedic Association, and the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons. Maloney also is a past president of the Hip Society.
 
Maloney attended undergraduate school at Stanford University and received a medical degree from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. He interned and then served as junior, senior and chief resident in orthopedic surgery at Stanford Medical Center, and also was a clinical fellow in hip reconstruction surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Prior to becoming orthopedic chair at Stanford, Maloney served on the faculty of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine and as chief of orthopedics at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Mo.
 
Other additions to the AAOS board include Ken Yamaguchi, M.D., as treasurer; David Alexander Halsey, M.D., as Board of Specialty Societies chair; David J. Mansfield, M.D., as Board of Councilors chair; and both Howard R. Epps, M.D., and Daniel C. Farber, M.D., as general board members.