About Derek Ward, MD

Dr. Derek Ward is a Board Certified orthopedic surgeon specializing in adult reconstruction for hip and knee arthritis. He sees patients with all types of degenerative disease of the hip and knee as well as patients with complications from prior joint replacement. He takes a comprehensive approach to the diagnosis and management of hip and knee pain, incorporating the latest advancements in perioperative pain management, surgical reconstruction, and recovery including the direct anterior approach to total hip replacement, partial knee replacement, and revision surgery.

Dr. Derek Ward is an Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine and Affiliate Faculty at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies. He specializes in adult reconstruction of the hip and knee including primary and complex revision surgery. Dr. Ward completed his undergraduate training at Williams College and then spent several years working in Washington D.C. in health care policy and in Africa working in global health. He completed his medical training at UCSF in 2010 where he spent an extra year studying health care policy. Dr. Ward remained at UCSF, completing his Orthopaedic Surgery Residency in 2015 followed by a fellowship in adult reconstruction at the Rothman Institute in Philadelphia. He joined the UCSF faculty in 2016. He has won regional and national awards for research including the James A. Rand Young Investigator Award for the most Outstanding Paper in Arthroplasty.

Dr. Ward’s research interests include health care policy and cost effectiveness, peri-operative risk assessment and optimization, medical education, and revision hip and knee replacement. Dr. Ward serves as the orthopaedic lead for the UCSF Hip Fracture Initiative as well as the orthopaedic alternative payment program, co-chairing the Bundled Payment Care Improvement committee with the Office of Population Health. He is dedicated to educating the next generation of physicians and is actively involved in all levels of medical education. He reviews research for several major journals and is a member of the California Orthopaedic Association, the Western Orthopaedic Association, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, and The American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons. 

In addition, he is co-director of an annual continuing medication education course: UCSF Arthroplasty for the Modern Surgeon: Hip, Knee and Health Innovation Technology.