A Perfect Fit
A trusted area physician for 30 years, Dr. Richard Cautilli leads Bucks County Orthopedic Specialists’ office serving the communities surrounding Langhorne, Newtown, and Yardley.
With the way that health care has trended lately, it’s not as easy to form a long-lasting, meaningful relationship with a doctor as it used to be. Many practices are so overwhelmed that patients aren’t even guaranteed of seeing the same physician with each visit. Even when they are, there seems to be more of an emphasis on speed of service than on building a personal connection.
Fortunately, some medical professionals still dedicate themselves to connecting with patients to the point that they become fixtures in the community. One of them is Richard Cautilli, M.D., a fellowship-trained physician specializing in sports medicine who has been providing top-notch orthopedic care to residents of Lower Bucks County for three decades. His experience and patient-first approach made him a perfect addition to the team at Bucks County Orthopedic Specialists.
Bucks County Orthopedic Specialists has been serving Bucks and Montgomery counties for 40 years. Founded as a one-physician office, the practice has grown to include four locations and a team of orthopedic specialists. Dr. Cautilli joined the practice in October to support Bucks County Orthopedic Specialists’ office serving Langhorne, Newtown, Yardley, and surrounding communities. With a focus on injuries affecting the knees, shoulders, and ankles, Dr. Cautilli has helped thousands of patients recover from various ailments, from professional athletes coping with injuries, to kids who have fallen off their bikes and skateboards, to seniors who are experiencing arthritis.
“I’ve seen the entire gamut,” he says. “I’ve seen four generations of patients in some families. That’s the advantage to being in the same community for so long and being trusted. No matter what, people are going to get good care, and that’s what I find rewarding.”
Dr. Cautilli is also well-known away from the office. He and his wife, a nurse, raised four children in the area, and he continues to serve as the team physician for the Neshaminy High School football team. He comes from a family of orthopedic surgeons and was previously in private, independent practice. With his father and one brother having recently retired, joining Bucks County Orthopedic Specialists made perfect sense. Not only does his philosophy on orthopedics align with the practice, but he also likes having an entire team with different backgrounds and perspectives to collaborate with when the need arises.
“The good thing about this group is that there’s a blend of older and younger surgeons, so you get the interface of technology with wisdom,” he says. “Just because something is the newest thing doesn’t mean it’s going to have good long-term results. There are a lot of things we’ve done in orthopedics that sounded like a good idea but didn’t turn out to be. On the flip side, younger people are more computer oriented and do more things that are technologically driven, and they’re making it less invasive for the patient and making for a faster recovery.
“The overriding principles are the same,” he continues. “It’s just a matter of how you apply them, whether it’s through minimally invasive surgery or treatment methods that are not as damaging to the tissue. Our primary, overriding priority is patient care and helping them get back to their previous level of function, whatever that may be.”
Although he has spent the majority of his career as an operative surgeon, Dr. Cautilli is now a non-operative surgeon who believes many issues can be handled conservatively. His experience allows him to work closely with the surgical team when that avenue becomes a necessity. He has no problem moving forward with a surgical approach as long as a patient is committed to doing the rehabilitation that follows.
“It’s a matter of trying to figure out the patient’s motivation, whether that’s getting back to a high level in sports—either high school, college, or professional—or they just want to be active with their grandkids,” he says. “If you have something that is motivating you, you’re more likely to get to your end result.
“I decided to do sports medicine because I liked being able to help people return to something that they couldn’t do,” he continues. “If you tore your ACL, it used to be that you could never play sports again. But now we can reconstruct your ACL and you can get back to the highest level of sports performance. Technology and the rehab process have really come a long way. Things that used to be career-ending are not even season-ending anymore.”
Working out of St. Mary Medical Center, Dr. Cautilli offers world-class care right in patients’ own backyard, without having to travel to Philadelphia, fight traffic, and find parking. He’s also able to see them as soon as their problem needs attention.
“The good thing is that even though we’re 30 miles from the city, you’re getting university-level orthopedics in the community, rather than having to go downtown to a major university,” he says. “The advantage to not operating is that it allows me to be in the office five days a week and see patients that next day or even the same day. If you have an injury or you’re in pain, you want to get answers, and we’d much rather have you get professional answers than going to Dr. Google, which confuses the whole issue. Timely diagnoses and treatment programs make it a whole lot better for the patient in the long run.”
When Dr. Cautilli is able to guide a patient toward a positive outcome, their relationship rarely stops there. He’ll often run into them around town and ask about their progress, and like his father before him, it’s quite common for patients to stop by the office to personally thank him or even bring in homemade baked goods as a gesture of gratitude.
“It’s not great for the waistline,” he jokes, “but it shows you how much they appreciate what you’ve done for them.”
For more information on Bucks County Orthopedic Specialists and its physicians and locations, including the one at St. Mary Medical Center, visit bucksortho.com or call (215) 348-7000.
Photo by Alison Dunlap
Published (and copyrighted) in Suburban Life, December 2023
