Dr. Craig Mahoney Earns 13th Consecutive Castle Connolly Top Doctor Honor

Dr. Craig R. Mahoney, an orthopaedic surgeon with Iowa Ortho, has been honored as a 2026 Castle Connolly Top Doctor, marking his 13th consecutive year receiving this prestigious recognition. This distinction places him among an elite group, as only 7 percent of the nation's licensed physicians are selected annually as Castle Connolly Top Doctors for their specialties in their respective regions. Dr. Mahoney serves as the Physician Leader and Vice President of the Orthopaedic Service Line at MercyOne and is a partner at the Iowa Orthopaedic Center, where he has built a distinguished career focused on joint replacement care and improving patient outcomes through clinical excellence and healthcare innovation.

In his statement, Dr. Mahoney expressed honor at the recognition, highlighting his philosophy of exhausting all nonsurgical options before recommending joint replacement surgery. With over 23 years of dedicated practice and more than 8,000 successful hip and knee replacements, his goals extend beyond improving mobility and decreasing pain to enhancing each patient's quality of life through evidence-based techniques that emphasize long-term outcomes. He performs several advanced surgical procedures, including Total Hip Arthroplasty, Total Knee Arthroplasty, Hip and Knee Revision Surgery, Computer-navigated Joint Replacement, Impaction Grafting, and Vascular Management in Rotationplasty, showcasing his technical expertise and commitment to cutting-edge care.

Dr. Mahoney's credentials are equally impressive: he earned his medical degree from the University of Iowa College of Medicine in 1995, completed his orthopaedic surgery residency at the Creighton/University of Nebraska Health Foundation in 2001, and finished a fellowship in Adult Reconstruction at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York in 2002. His professional accomplishments include authoring more than 40 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters in prestigious publications like The Journal of Arthroplasty and Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research. Additionally, he has held significant leadership roles, such as President of the Mid-America Orthopaedic Association and the Iowa Orthopaedic Society, and served on the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Board of Councilors for six years. The selection process for Top Doctors involves nominations by peer physicians and rigorous evaluation by the physician-led Castle Connolly research team, ensuring that honorees like Dr. Mahoney are recognized for their medical education, training, hospital appointments, and disciplinary histories, without any payment involved.