In a new national ranking released today by Newsweek and Statista, John Park, MD, PhD; Roger Hartl, MD; and Daniel Riew, MD, all of Och Spine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, were named to the list of America’s Best Spine Surgeons 2024. Our colleague uptown at the Columbia campus of Och Spine at NewYork-Presbyterian, Peter D. Angevine, MD, was also named to the list.
This is the magazine’s inaugural list of the best spine surgeons in the United States, but they have recognized the neurosurgeons of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center before. Since Newsweek and Statista started ranking specialized hospitals in 2021, they have placed the neurosurgery service at NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University at the top of that list. When the 2024 lists came out, it was a hat trick – for the third year in a row we were the #1 hospital for neurosurgery in New York, and one of the very best in the world. (Yes, one of the best hospitals for neurosurgery in the world.)
Dr. John Park
John Park, MD, PhD, is professor of neurosurgery at Weill Cornell Medicine and the chief of neurological surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian Queens; he is also co-director of the CSF Leak Program at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Park has particular expertise in the treatment of spinal tumors and degenerative disorders of the cervical and lumbar spine. He is the only spine surgeon in Queens named to the annual Castle Connolly list of top neurosurgeons, and now the only spine surgeon in Queens honored by Newsweek’s ranking. He cares for patients at Och Spine at NewYork-Presbyterian Queens as well as at the main campus on the Upper East Side.
Before joining the faculty at Weill Cornell Medicine Neurological Surgery, Dr. Park founded and served as the medical director of the multidisciplinary Brain and Spinal Tumor Program at Cottage Health in Santa Barbara, now the largest such program on the central coast of California.
Dr. Roger Hartl
Roger Härtl, MD, is the Hansen-MacDonald Professor of Neurological Surgery and director of spinal surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine as well as co-director of Och Spine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. He has an international reputation for expertise in complex and minimally invasive spine surgery as well as biological approaches for disc repair and regeneration. Dr. Härtl is a pioneer in computer-assisted spinal navigation surgery and a leader in new advances such as augmented reality in spine surgery. He is also committed to improving neurosurgical care in developing countries and is the founder and leader of Weill Cornell Medicine's Global Health Neurosurgery Initiative in Tanzania.
Dr. Härtl's patients come from all over the globe and include many physicians, surgeons, and even other neurological and spine surgeons. He has been repeatedly named to the lists of New York Super Doctors, America's Top Surgeons, and America's Best Doctors, and has been included on the list of New York’s Best Doctors in New York magazine. He has authored more than 250 scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals and is the editor of four books on minimally invasive spinal surgery and biological disc repair and regeneration.
Dr. K. Daniel Riew
K. Daniel Riew, MD, is an internationally recognized expert in cervical spine disorders and one of only two or three spine surgeons in the world to limit his practice entirely to the cervical spine. His patient roster includes celebrities, athletes, world leaders, and, most notably, other physicians who seek the very best for disorders of the cervical spine. He has performed more surgical procedures on the cervical spine than almost any other surgeon in the world, and his expertise and experience on such a large number of patients combine to make him the go-to surgeon for cervical spine procedures.
For the past 20 years Dr. Riew has been regularly named to the lists of America’s Top Doctors, Best Doctors in America, New York SuperDoctors, and Top 25 Spine Surgeons in North America by Orthopedics This Week.
