Compassion through understanding.
Dr. Lloyd Hey brings a rare combination of personal experience as a patient, engineering innovation from MIT, Harvard Med School, Harvard Orthopedic Residency, Boston Children’s and Duke Orthopedic & Neurosurgical Spine Fellowship training and over 30 years of surgical expertise, 9,500 surgeries to every patient he treats.
From patient to spine surgeon
Dr. Lloyd Hey grew up flying with his Dad, an aeronautical engineer and flight instructor, who also taught him how to fix just about anything as a “tinkerer.” At age 16, he was hit by a car, suffering a severe 3B open tibia fracture with 2 inch loss of bone. While amputation was initially suggested in the emergency department, Dr. Mark Pitman offered to try to help rebuild the leg and his life, which took 11 surgeries, 3 months in the hospital, and a couple years of additional therapy. The external fixator had strength problems, which inhibited healing, so Dr. Hey applied his tinkering and redesigned the frame, which Dr. Pitman installed and it decreased the pain and enhanced stability for bone healing. These experiences led to a vision of combining his patient experience, engineering and innovation to directly help patients.
MIT, Harvard, and Duke
For many years since then, Lloyd has passionately pursued making this vision real, through a journey blessed with many great mentors, education and leadership opportunities, challenges and successes. After learning how to walk again on his reconstructed leg, he trained at MIT in Electrical Engineering. At MIT he designed, built and tested a chamber device that could keep living cartilage alive, while applying mechanical and electrical forces to better understand Wolff’s Law and the basic science that might help to modulate cartilage growth and repair. He then got a chance to further the engineering/medical combined vision through the Harvard/MIT Health Sciences and Technology (HST) MD program, where he began to study clinical outcomes research, and how such research could actually change healthcare policy, also obtaining a Master’s Degree at the Harvard School of Public Health. As an orthopedic resident in the Harvard Combined Orthopedic program, he saw a huge problem in the area of a lack of available data for clinical outcomes research, and actually built a database system for the Boston Children’s Department of Orthopedic Surgery, which enhanced their ability to do clinical research. He was also inspired by Dr. John Hall and John Emans at Children’s to also pursue helping children and adults with spinal deformities through the use of internal “fixators”, which he saw transform the lives of many. This led Dr. Hey to Duke, where he completed the Duke Orthopedic & Neurosurgical Spine Fellowship, and then joined the Duke faculty, serving in the academic field for almost 10 years. During that time, he was asked to roll out the software he had built as a resident across all of Duke, and to create a startup company, called MDeverywhere to fulfill the mission for thousands of physicians around the country for 20 years.
A commitment to reshaping lives
In 2005, Dr. Hey started Hey Clinic for Scoliosis and Spine Surgery as a “living, learning lab” to focus on bringing “Compassionate Process Control” to the point of care using lean and aviation safety principles. He has performed over 9,500 spine surgeries, and continues to be clinically active with his feet firmly placed in the “clinical trench” where the problems can be seen and gradually solved.
He is now working with other surgeons from around the country to see how information technologies and new “crew management” techniques can help bring aviation-level patient safety to healthcare. He also seeks to mentor the next generation of surgeon innovator leaders, so that future patients and families can be served with greater safety, effectiveness and efficiency built on the foundation of compassion.
Lloyd has been blessed with a wonderful wife of 40 years, and two grown children, and still enjoys “tinkering”, serving in his local church and community, and works hard to keep margin in his life as another key way to maintain joy in the journey.
Scoliosis Research Society & CareGuard
Dr. Hey served as Chairman of the Scoliosis Research Society (SRS) Safety & Value Committee ↗ in 2020–2021 and currently serves as Past Chair. He has also served as Chair of the Adult Deformity Committee within SRS — a position earned through extensive experience and devotion to the study of scoliosis treatment. For more information about SRS, please visit www.srs.org.
¹ De la Garza Ramos R, Hey LA, et al. Development of the SRS Spinal Deformity Surgery Safety Checklist. Spine Deformity. 2024.
Dr. Hey founded the non-profit CareGuard Institute to inspire future healthcare leaders to increase resilience, fight burnout, and always care with a heartset of compassion. Learn more at careguard.org.
Dr. Hey has contributed to the journal UpToDate on lifelong scoliosis care. Read the article on UpToDate →
² Hey LA. Scoliosis in the Adult. UpToDate (Wolters Kluwer). 2018–present. — The world’s most widely used clinical decision-support resource, consulted by physicians globally.
Research & Published Work
Peer-reviewed publications by Dr. Lloyd A. Hey, MD MS and Hey Clinic team members.
De la Garza Ramos R, Scheer JK, Matmati N, Hey LA, Burton DC, de Kleuver M, Ames CP, Yanamadala V.
Development of the SRS Spinal Deformity Surgery Safety Checklist.
Hey LA, Turner TC.
Using Standardized OR Checklists and Creating Extended Time-Out Checklists.
Edwards GM, Brotzman G, Max B, Stanson K, Hey LA, et al.
Improving Wake-Up Times for Spine Surgery Using New OR Team Checklist Protocol.
Rendahl R, Hey LA.
A Checklist for Responding to Intraoperative Neuromonitoring Changes.
Hey LA.
Scoliosis in the Adult. [Subscription required]
Hey LA, Stanson K, Darroch K, Dorr V.
Sharing the Truth of Scoliosis Curve Progression Risk with Patients and Families Using a Colorized Natural History Graph Handout.
Mobley J, Arhin M, Stanson K, Kramer N, Hey LA.
Avoiding Surgery: Successful Weight Loss as an Alternative Treatment for Degenerative Spine Disease.
Ames CP, Scheer JK, Lafage V, Smith JS, Hey LA, et al.
Adult Spinal Deformity: Epidemiology, Health Impact, Evaluation, and Management.
Scheer JK, Sethi RK, Hey LA, et al.
Results of the 2015 SRS Survey on Single Versus Dual Attending Surgeon Approach for Adult Spinal Deformity Surgery.
Coonrad RW, Murrell GA, Motley G, Lytle E, Hey LA.
A Logical Coronal Pattern Classification of 2,000 Consecutive Idiopathic Scoliosis Cases.
Warren JM, Mazzoleni AP, Hey LA.
Development and Validation of a Computationally Efficient Finite Element Model of the Human Lumbar Spine.
Warren JM, Hey LA, Mazzoleni AP.
Finite Element Study of the Relationship Between Upper Body Weight and Lumbosacral Spine Loads.
Warren JM, Hey LA, Mazzoleni AP.
Biomechanical Analysis of Bracing and BMI Impact on Scoliotic Spine Loading.
Contact Hey Clinic for a complete list of publications.
Schedule a consultation to discuss your spine condition with Dr. Hey and his team. We welcome second opinions and out-of-town patients.
