Top Doctors 2023: Breaking Barriers

Top Doctors are reshaping medicine in the Twin Cities and beyond through cutting-edge techniques, technologies, research, and approaches to patient care.

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Medical advances happen every day. Some changes make headlines, while others, no less profound, happen behind the scenes. Dedicated professionals and groundbreaking technology transform how patients fight disease, evolve treatments so they are less invasive and more accessible to all in need, innovate new ways for individuals to take control of their health, and make sure future professionals from underrepresented communities of color have an opportunity to be part of the teams helping shape the future of medicine. Turn the page to learn about six local Top Doctors at the forefront of important changes, big and small, happening in our medical community. Then, read on to discover this year’s list of Top Doctors, nearly 830 professionals from 46 specialties who have been selected through a process involving extensive research and peer review.

Advocating for More Diversity

During his nearly 35-year career as an orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine physician, Dr. Joel Boyd has gotten used to being an anomaly as one of very few Black doctors in the field. It has meant breaking ground as the first Black team physician in the National Hockey League and encountering patients or professional athletes who are sometimes surprised to see him. Regardless, Boyd concentrates on staying on the cutting edge of his field and providing excellent medical care. 

But like many people, Boyd was shaken up by the murder of George Floyd and subsequent attention on systemic racism and disparities. It strengthened his drive to bring more diversity to his corner of medicine. Orthopedic surgery is notoriously male and white, with only 15 percent of physicians identifying as BIPOC, including just 2 percent who are Black, and 7 percent identifying as women. “Orthopedics has been sort of an old boys’ club,” he says. 

Boyd urged the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine to work harder to bring more physicians of color into the specialty and now serves as co-chair of the society’s diversity, equity, and inclusion committee. It champions efforts to expand the pipeline of physicians from underrepresented groups for orthopedic surgery training and increase the number of BIPOC physicians in leadership roles, who then attract more students, residents, and faculty from diverse backgrounds. 

“With regards to diversity, there’s not enough people in the pipeline,” he says. “The biggest influence of having people in the pipeline is having people in leadership positions that they can see.”

“It’s important to figure out where you can make an impact and then get involved.”

— Dr. Joel Boyd

This crucial work ultimately benefits patients, Boyd says. He points to a large body of evidence that when physicians of color provide care, health outcomes in communities of color improve. “It’s no different when we talk about professional sports,” he adds. “The players open up and talk more about things and have better communication with the physicians who look like them.” 

Throughout his career, Boyd has brought innovative care to orthopedics. Trained at the Cleveland Clinic, Boyd was recruited to Minnesota in 1990 to join a groundbreaking new sports medicine center at Fairview Riverside Hospital. In 2002, he was one of the founding physicians of The Orthopedic Center, a novel freestanding, full-scope clinic that centralized its orthopedic services in one location. It eventually evolved into Tria, where Boyd sees patients for concerns such as ACL and other ligament injuries and surgical repair and reconstruction. 

Boyd has worn many hats in sports medicine, serving as head team physician for the Vikings, the Lynx, University of Minnesota football, several U.S. Olympic men’s and women’s hockey teams, and, of course, the Wild’s inaugural team. Starting when skaters hit the ice in 2000, he’s been the team’s doctor ever since. Boyd first got involved with hockey locally as the Minnesota State High School League medical director and then with Hockey is for Everyone, an initiative to improve inclusivity in the sport.

A former college football player, Boyd has always loved sports and taking care of athletes. Whether he’s helping hurt players or Tria patients, Boyd strives to get them healthy and back to doing the things they love. “My approach has been to be at the leading edge of treatment, procedures, or rehab protocols,” Boyd says. “Many times, the things we do with athletes trickle down to everyone else in the population. It’s fun to keep an eye on that. We want our patients to have the best care, whatever their problem or injury is.”

Overcoming Setbacks and Disparities

Many of the patients Dr. Rahel Nardos treats are women experiencing pelvic floor injuries or disorders, often after years of contending with the effects of childbirth or aging. Nardos, a specialist who focuses on urinary tract and reproductive system issues, delights in helping patients get back to normal after they have lived for years, sometimes, with overactive bladders, incontinence, pelvic pain, pelvic organ prolapse, and shame. 

“Doing this work sustains me. It’s a privilege serving women and doing what you can to help improve their quality of life so they can be fully functional and achieve what they want to,” says Nardos, an associate professor of female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery at the University of Minnesota. “Women are inspiring. I am inspired by their resilience.” Nardos takes a micro and macro approach to helping women. She treats individual patients with surgery (often minimally invasive) and other interventions while also focusing significant energy on challenges and solutions that affect women globally. 

Nardos grew up in Ethiopia, a part of the world where many women develop fistulas—an abnormal channel between the birth canal and bladder or rectum—due to long labors and poor medical care. She went into medicine with the hope of not only helping patients with these pelvic issues but also improving women’s health around the world. After medical school and residency in the U.S., she went back to Ethiopia for a year to work in Addis Ababa and in rural areas in Ethiopia to treat women with childbirth injuries. 

She arrived in Minnesota in 2020 from Oregon Health and Science University and has made an outsize impact ever since. Nardos is engaged in treating patients; research; and collaborations with other innovators in global health, medical device development, and clinical care. Much of her big-picture work targets women’s health disparities in the United States and around the world. 

For starters, Nardos notes that, globally, a woman dies every two minutes from pregnancy or childbirth, and 95 percent of those deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. As the director of global women’s health at the Center for Global Health and Social Responsibility at the University of Minnesota, Nardos is passionate about “making sure that every girl and woman has a fair shot at achieving her full potential. One way to do that is to provide access to quality health care,” she says. “That’s true whether we’re talking about women in Ethiopia or women right here in our communities.”

Nardos notes, “A lot of my projects are driven by my own frustration with the failure of options that we’re providing people.” For instance, Nardos is working with the University’s M Simulation center and Kaiser Permanente to develop video and simulation training to help physicians improve their surgical skills and prevent common injuries while performing cesarean sections in rural, low-resource areas around the world, where doctors may not have gone through a surgery-based residency or training program. She also knows firsthand that many common surgical tools are inaccessible and unaffordable in these areas. To help, Nardos launched a collaboration with students at the U of M’s Institute for Engineering in Medicine to design safe, reusable tools that work well in developing countries. 

Closer to home, but with wide-reaching impact, Nardos also formed a partnership with the university’s Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing to help provide mind-body interventions for women with pelvic floor disorders. The team, including a psychologist, mindfulness expert, and pelvic floor physical therapist, is developing a mindfulness-based training app. There is a growing understanding that stress and anxiety contribute to some bladder and pelvic floor issues, Nardos says. With exercises, mindfulness, and meditation, the eight-week program aims to ease symptoms by providing tools to strengthen women’s mind-body connections. 

Nardos’s interconnected work is united by her goals to make care for women everywhere better, safer, and easier to access. “I don’t want to sit and wait for someone to solve problems,” she says. “They say that leaders are always learning, and I find myself doing that. I truly believe that we do better work when we collaborate across disciplines and professional groups—it’s what’s best for our patients. We’re in a privileged position to have a bird’s-eye view of problems and work with others to come up with something better.”

Tackling Cancer

Why do some smokers develop cancer while others don’t? Dr. Samir Khariwala, a head and neck cancer surgeon, has always wanted to know. Are there genetic or metabolic reasons that put some people at higher risk? And what carcinogens in tobacco products play the biggest roles? 

A professor and chair of the University of Minnesota’s otolaryngology and head and neck surgery department, Khariwala is committed to researching such questions. He regularly sees the consequences of such cancers and aims to create ways to prevent higher-risk people from developing the cancers his patients routinely fight, from thyroid and salivary gland cancers to cancers of the oral cavity and larynx. He also performs surgeries that aren’t cancer-related to address trauma, congenital problems, facial paralysis, and benign tumors.

Surgical procedures in the head and neck are all inherently complex and delicate. Often, surgeons are operating in very small spaces with important anatomy, like large vessels in the neck that supply blood to the brain. The work often involves reconstruction of facial nerves, skin, and other tissues, while also working around nerves for the shoulder muscles, the tongue, and other areas that need to be preserved. To add to the complexity, surgery in the mouth and throat can have significant impacts on a patient’s communication and quality of life going forward, so surgeons strive to solve issues and help cure the cancer while optimizing patients’ post-treatment function and quality of life. 

“Head and neck cancers are different in that they impact the things that make us unique, whether it’s our appearance or voice,” Khariwala says. “They also impact things that are often impossible to hide and that are required to get through the day and interact with others, like speech, appearance, hearing, and sight. It causes a significant amount of stress for our patients.”

Khariwala came to the U in 2008 after residency training at the Cleveland Clinic and a fellowship at the University of Michigan. Ever since, he has worked to advance surgical and treatment options for patients with head and neck cancer. Khariwala is buoyed by progress in both minimally invasive surgery techniques and treatments such as proton therapy radiation and immunotherapy—more targeted approaches than traditional chemotherapy and radiation that are proving to be quite effective. 

Khariwala strives to share this hope with patients. Working in a multidisciplinary team including social workers, speech therapists, dietitians, and care coordinators, he helps patients through an extremely challenging time with information about what to expect, addressing their fears and providing deep support.

He also concentrates on improving screening, prevention, and treatment options through his research. Recent work includes developing biomarkers to determine which tobacco users face the highest cancer risks; evaluating the impacts of smokeless tobacco products in India, where oral cancer rates are high; and gauging the effectiveness of smoking-cessation programs for people with head and neck cancer so patients can ideally avoid tobacco products in the future.

Working not only to cure cancer but also to study the cause “is an important part of our mission to move the field of medicine and science forward,” Khariwala says. “Part of my career goal as a scientist and physician is to treat patients and understand ways we can do it better in the future, especially seeing the terrible effects on patients who develop cancer from tobacco products. Doing that work adds a lot of meaning.” 

As Khariwala notes, “It’s very overwhelming for patients. We’re trying to help them understand what’s going on and what they can expect. We play such an important role in our patients’ lives. It’s a powerful thing. Ultimately, the most powerful thing for me is that I’ve helped save lives.”

Improving Care for Families

For more than two decades, Dr. Helen Kim has championed mental health services for perinatal and postpartum patients, their partners, and their children at Hennepin Healthcare and developed innovative ways to provide care that address the root causes of their mental health challenges. A reproductive and perinatal psychiatrist, Kim co-founded Minnesota’s first reproductive psychiatry program, the Hennepin Women’s Mental Health Program, in 1999. It treated thousands of pregnant and postpartum women experiencing anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns. 

Through this work, Kim saw that providers could better help patients and nurture families by zooming out to a broader circle that also includes their babies and other relatives. Inspired, she went on to lead the opening of another new-to-Minnesota model, Hennepin’s Mother-Baby Program, in 2013. It offers a comprehensive approach that includes a day hospital; outpatient psychiatry services; and other connection points, such as the HopeLine (612-873-6262), and provides broad mental health services to struggling pregnant women and families with children up to age 5. 

The need for this kind of help is vast, with one in five women and one in 10 men experiencing prenatal or postpartum depression or anxiety. Yet, Kim says, “a common comment we hear from mothers is, ‘I thought I was the only one.’ Somehow, we’ve convinced the public or ourselves that parenting is an easy thing.”

Kim continued her groundbreaking advances in 2020, when she co-founded Hennepin’s Redleaf Center for Family Healing to address the root causes of many parents’ struggles. Its whole-person, multigenerational model provides mental health and parenting support, including group therapy to build connections among parents, plus mind-body-spirt healing through its teaching kitchen and mindful movement classes.

“It’s such a privilege to meet people at this incredibly important time of their life and to be a witness to this family moment when they are expecting a baby or becoming a parent.”

— Dr. Helen Kim

Kim developed the seeds for her pioneering care during residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she saw the impact of patients’ early life experiences on their mental health and relationships. At Redleaf, Kim aims to shift from focusing on piecemeal symptoms to addressing all the factors that impact patients’ health, from trauma to systemic racism. It’s effective because clinicians help patients heal while setting the stage for their children to thrive in healthier environments—what Kim calls a downstream-upstream model. “Part of our mission is to change the culture around parenting and recognize that empowering parents with skills and support allows them to be the caregivers that children need for healthy development,” she adds. “That’s our best return on investment.” 

One of the fundamental keys to success for Redleaf and the Mother-Baby Program is the long-term relationships they help create with patients. Recently, Kim saw a mom who had been in the program with a newborn seven years ago, and through the Mother-Baby Program’s services, she was able to recently have another baby. In her journey, the program had helped this mother learn about her own trauma and discover ways to parent differently from what she experienced as a child. It also helped her build a healthier relationship with her own parents. This is what Kim calls generational healing. Now this mom is better equipped to raise her children in a healthier way, setting them up for a better life. 

The center also offers ways to break down the sense of isolation parents sometimes experience. “Redleaf creates spaces for pregnant women and mothers to connect with each other at a time when the human need for connection and belonging is intensely felt,” she says. 

Though the challenges are big and entrenched, Kim draws strength from the babies. “They are completely vulnerable and dependent on their caregivers at a time when their brain development is rapidly evolving, during a perfect storm when caregivers have perinatal disorders,” Kim says. “Seeing babies and children on a daily basis makes you want to do better. The stakes are so high, and it really inspires me.”

Increasing Life Expectancy

In the United States, as many as 10 million people have significant valve-related heart disease, yet only one-third receive lifesaving treatment. This statistic astounds Dr. Paul Sorajja, an interventional cardiologist and director of the Center for Valve and Structural Heart Disease at the Allina Health Minneapolis Heart Institute. Many have conditions that go undiagnosed, while others reject or cannot have open-heart surgery. 

Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in the United States. “Valve disease is a public health crisis. If you look at survivorship, it’s worse than most malignant cancers,” Sorajja says. Damaged valves can increase pressure or cause leakage, forcing the heart to work harder to maintain circulation. Patients, the vast majority in their 70s and 80s, experience varying degrees of tiredness, shortness of breath, swelling in the legs, and weakness—symptoms that may be overlooked but also can be indications of heart failure. For patients with symptomatic heart disease who cannot have surgery, life expectancy may be reduced to one to two years. “This is a disease where patients have no options and live a miserable quality of life,” he says. “Surgery is not a good option. They have been suffering.” 

Sorajja has made it his life’s work to find ways to help the legions suffering from this life-limiting health condition. The key was finding an effective yet less invasive approach to fix valve issues. Sorajja and his team helped to deliver a modified technique that uses catheter-based technology in place of major heart surgery, which can be associated with a long recovery. In 2015, Sorajja and his team made history, completing the first noninvasive transcatheter mitral valve replacement on a patient in the United States. In the years since, this has become a more widely available procedure, where a small incision is made in the groin and the device is threaded to the heart using a catheter. The valve is repaired or replaced without needing to stop the heart. The procedure takes less than an hour, and recovery requires just days. 

He and his team further advanced the science by completing a first-in-human clinical trial that earned national attention in 2023 for successfully repairing leaky tricuspid valves. After the minimally invasive procedure, designed to improve quality of life, patients reported that they felt immeasurably better. “What’s amazing is that we just have to repair or replace the valve, and people can have their lives restored,” he says. “We’re on a mission to really try to help people understand that you don’t have to live with these symptoms of heart failure.”

“About once a week, I have someone cry on my shoulder with tears of gratitude. I love touching people’s lives in that way.”

— Dr. Paul Sorajja

Sorajja didn’t plan on a career in cardiology, but he knew he wanted to work in a chronic care specialty and combine surgery with long-term patient care. During medical school at the Mayo Clinic, he saw his first ultrasound of a heart in action and was struck by its beauty—and the dire consequences when it’s ailing. Sorajja realized that cardiology was for him. After residency training at Mayo and work as a clinical research fellow in London, Sorajja spent the first part of his career at Mayo. He joined the Heart Institute in 2013. Over the years, he has worked to advance scientific knowledge surrounding his sphere of expertise, publishing more than 500 research papers and book chapters, as well as several books. He also won the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation’s 2017 Robert G. Hauser Award for Leadership Excellence in Innovation. 

Sorajja deeply appreciates the opportunities afforded him by living in Minnesota, a state with a long history of medical innovation and a thriving medical device industry. He and other physicians who want to contribute to breakthrough treatments can collaborate with roughly 350 med-tech companies in the state. “I have the privilege of being a full-time practicing cardiologist and doing medical research and innovation. I’m blessed to have both,”  Sorajja says.

He adds, “I found my calling. It is incredibly gratifying to see patients and families after a procedure and be able to say that it’s going to be all right. The impact is so positive on these patients’ lives when they have something so life-threatening. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

Expanding Vision Options

Even though Dr. David Folden has more than 10,000 eye-related surgeries under his belt, he still finds wonder each time he makes an immediate difference in a patient’s vision. People come to him with cloudy eyesight or difficulty seeing at night due to cataracts. He helps patients understand how he can resolve cataract issues and also possibly solve other vision problems, such as astigmatism, nearsightedness, and presbyopia, during the same procedure. 

Folden, an ophthalmologist at Twin Cities Eye Consultants, spends significant time with each patient to learn about their vision and their desired outcome. Do they want to eliminate the need for reading glasses? Or would they like to have better distance vision? “Overnight, cataract surgery will change a patient’s vision, their outlook, and their ability to function. You also have the opportunity to clean up their prescription by choosing the proper make and model and type of lens—you’re killing two birds with one stone,” Folden says. 

For instance, one lens he uses, called a multifocal intraocular lens, can correct astigmatism and/or nearsightedness and farsightedness—helping people be glasses-free. “It can be so impactful. That’s a big reason why I love what I do.” 

Folden is always seeking ways to improve patient care by testing different lenses, publishing his findings, and adopting new technology. A good example involves his work to offer light-adjustable lenses to more cataract patients. These lenses work well for people who had LASIK or radial keratotomy surgery to correct their vision. The previous procedure often makes fine-tuning eyesight more challenging during cataract surgery. People who pick light-adjustable lenses need five UV light treatments to finesse their vision, a level of treatment that many ophthalmologists find burdensome. So, Folden developed a partnership with optometrist Dr. Jennifer Wong. Now she handles patient treatments for about 30 Twin Cities ophthalmologists, freeing them up for patient consultations and surgery.

“The technology was around for about a year, but no one was using it. It was logistically cumbersome because of all the additional follow-ups,” Folden says. “Our purpose was to make it easier and safer and give better outcomes with everyone doing their area of specialization. This model becomes a turnkey opportunity for other surgeons.” 

Folden completed medical school at the University of North Dakota and his ophthalmology residency at the University of Minnesota, planning to focus on surgery for cataracts and vision correction. He often is an early adopter of technology, such as doing cataract surgery with femtosecond lasers (which allow surgeons to make more precise incisions with a lower risk for error and faster visual recovery) and designing surgical instruments for using these lasers. 

But that doesn’t mean he takes his eyes off patient care. From the start of his career, Folden has emphasized slowing down appointments so he can better educate patients about cataract surgery and different lens options. “I love to match the technology to what they are looking for,” he says. “I want to spend the time needed to educate patients before their surgery. We’re talking about someone’s vision and how impactful it will be from here on out.”

Meet the 2023 Top Doctors

The 27th edition of our Top Doctors list includes 829 doctors in 46 specialties. Here’s how we put it together.

When compiling a list that’s as relied upon as our annual Top Doctors list, research is essential. We asked physicians to nominate one or more doctors (excluding themselves) to whom they would go if they or a loved one were seeking medical care. From there, candidates were grouped into specialties and evaluated on myriad factors, including (but not limited to) peer recognition, professional achievement, and disciplinary history. Doctors with the highest scores from each grouping were invited to serve on a blue-ribbon panel that evaluated the other candidates. It should be noted that doctors cannot pay to be included on this list, nor are they paid to provide input. Physicians are chosen using a patented multiphase selection process combining peer nominations and evaluations with independent research. In the end, only the doctors who acquired the highest total points appear on Mpls.St.Paul Magazine’s 2023 Top Doctors list. Of course, no list is perfect. Many qualified doctors providing excellent care are not included on this year’s list. However, if you’re looking for exceptional physicians who have earned the confidence and high regard of their peers, you can start your search here or go to mspmag.com/topdoctors. In addition to the list you find here, this year’s group of Top Doctors will join a prestigious group of doctors from more than 20 cities around the country who have been selected to Super Doctors, the full list of which you can find at superdoctors.com.

Editor’s Note: Many of our Top Doctors have specialty certification recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties. This board certification requires substantial additional training in a doctor’s area of practice. We encourage you to discuss this board certification with your doctor to determine its relevance to your medical needs. More information about board certification is available at abms.org. © 2023 MSP Communications. All rights reserved.

© 2023 MSP Communications. All rights reserved. Super Doctors® is a registered trademark of MSP Communications. Disclaimer: The information presented is not medical advice, nor is Super Doctors a physician referral service. We strive to maintain a high degree of accuracy in the information provided. We make no claim, promise, or guarantee about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the information contained in the directory. Selecting a physician is an important decision that should not be based solely on advertising. Super Doctors is the name of a publication, not a title or moniker conferred upon individual physicians. No representation is made that the quality of services provided by the physicians listed will be greater than that of other licensed physicians, and past results do not guarantee future success. Super Doctors is an independent publisher that has developed its own selection methodology; it is not affiliated with any federal, state, or regulatory body. Self-designated practice specialties listed in Super Doctors do not imply “recognition” or “endorsement” of any field of medical practice, nor do they imply certification by a Member Medical Specialty Board of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) or that the physician has competence to practice the specialty. List research concluded May 5, 2023.

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