Kenneth Goranson, MD

Extremely happy. Explained everything clearly and most importantly, his surgery really was as perfect as it could be. Also his good sense of humor helped out a lot.
He put on the cast very well which requires skill not every doctor has.
Cannot recommend enough.

Brought my teenage daughter here for a MCL injury from a ski accident. Dr. Goranson was very thorough in his evaluation & explanation of treatment. We visited his office many times over a span of about 2 months. During every visit, Dr. Goranson was detailed, reassuring, and friendly. The front office staff was also exceptional. We’ve had no trouble with billing (since we belong to PAMF) or making appointments (we’d have to wait for weeks to see a sports medicine specialist within PAMF.)

Visited Dr. Goranson for a second opinion. He was very friendly and overall good experience.
I dinged a star because I had asked the receptionist if I should bring the MRIs preformed by my medical group, and she said I did not need and she would also check with the HMO group. It seems like she did not follow up and I went to the appointment, without my MRI. So word of advice, when in doubt, collect all records ahead of time, and bring to second opinion appointments.

I sustained a medial meniscus tear last year while training for a half marathon. I researched several orthopedists and initially went to someone at PAMF. They wanted me to do a whole bunch of unnecessary tests prior to arthroscopic surgery. I felt that the MD I saw was very aloof and arrogant. I did further investigation and found Dr Goranson. I myself am a physician and did what I thought no one should do and look a doctor up on Unilocal.He had great reviews. Then I asked an anesthesiologist friend of mine and told me he was the best and had him operate on his shoulder. My friend reassured me as he is in the OR all the time and picked Dr Goranson because he knew his technical skills were the best. I had a consultation with him and then scheduled the surgery at Waverly Surgery center. My surgery was on Friday and was back to work Monday afternoon without difficulty, no crutches, minimal pain, just advil.
All I can say Dr Goranson is first and foremost very personable, gives you the sense of confidence without the arrogance, extremely calming and most importantly a really good surgeon. I was so reassured. Waverly was equally great and the anesthesiologist I had, Dr Novak was fantastic.
Six months later I tore my other meniscus on the other side and went through the same scenario as above with Dr. Goranson with the same excellent outcome. I am not one to write Unilocal reviews and being both a doctor and patient I thought Dr Goranson exemplifies the best in our profession and felt compelled to honor him. BTW I am in a specialty that has minimal ties to orthopedics and therefore have no conflict of interest here, I do not get referrals from orthopedists and rarely refer to them unless they are friends. I am back running 4 – 5 miles three months later with no pain or discomfort.

As good as all the reviews suggested. I’ll highly recommend him for any orthopedic needs

One of the best of the best orthopedic surgeon in south bay.
Never met a humble and personable doctor like him.
Staff is great and appointment is easy to get.
He did the arthroscopic acl procedure on my left knee and I felt completely confident and happy on my recovery.
No second thoughts.
One of the greatest doctor I have ever met.
The best thing is he listens to what you say and very detail oriented answers.

I am being generous with 2 stars and that’s for his receptionist who is pretty nice and helpdul.
Doc appeared to be largely disinterested in me and came across cold and uncaring. He wouldn’t as much as look at the limb until I insisted. He also doesn’t have onsite xray facilities to do a quick diagnosis. Nor have wheelchairs or walking assistance for his patients. Overall severely dissatisfied with what appears to be a private practice.

Normally I do not support using Unilocal for doctor reviews, it is not a solid source to get a review of a medical professional. But I am for Goranson — bottom line, this guy and his staff are as good as it gets.
My knee started aching about 10 weeks ago, I am a runner, biker, and do a lot of hiking. No injury, just a huge amount of soreness. Got so bad I had to stop running… my wife made an appointment, my work schedule is so hectic, we had to change it 3 times. No waiting when I finally got to his office, he saw me at the agreed to time.
5 minutes into the visit, he suggested I had a «wear tear» in my meniscus, and sent me off to get a MRI. The approval for the MRI was handled by his staff, and I approved within 48 hours to have the MRI done immediately. One week after the MRI, I was in to see Goranson, the diagnosis was correct, I scheduled the surgery for the next week.
Waverly surgery center was the location for the cutting, they were awesome. Goranson did the work, I walked out of the surgery center that afternoon. 2 Vicodin that night, a few Aleve since that time, and 1 week after surgery I was on my mountain bike, and in 2 weeks he says I can run again.
That is 6 weeks total, from diagnosis to running again. This guy is awesome, and his support staff remarkable. He took a «low impact» approach, doing only what had to be done.
I am doing the Death Ride in July. I will be ready. Go see this guy.

So far so good! I visited Dr. Goranson for the first time this week to get my hip flexor checked out and he was very nice and did a comprehensive check. I really appreciated the time he took to learn about the history of my pain so that he could give me proper recommendations. I never felt rushed and I look forward to continuing to work with him.

I had been having knee pain for about five months with no successful conservative treatment that had been recommend by my family practice doctor. He referred me to Dr. Goranson. Dr. Goranson listened to me explain what I did that caused the original knee pain, what I had tried, and then checked out my knee. Since I had already tried the conservative approach and the pain was getting worse, he recommended having an MRI which I did. That revealed some fraying in my meniscus on both sides of the knee cap as well as under it. I had an arthroscopy at the Waverly Clinic which was uneventful. It has been about 1 month since the procedure and I am almost back to normal. I expect to be able to resume all my sports within the next month or less. He encouraged me to walk around as I was able and resume exercising gradually.
I would highly recommend Dr. Goranson. He really listens to you explain your symptoms, etc. You do not feel rushed. For all the appointments I had, there was never more than a 10 minute delay from my assigned appointment time. His staff was very efficient and friendly. Also, I did leave a fairly detailed message one time with a few questions and he called me back that evening to respond. Since I am healing well, I can say he did a great job.

clean updated office. lots of parking. friendly front staff. doctor allocates plenty of time to each patient and leaves blocks of time in his schedule so that people can have surgeries in a timely manner. dr. goranson himself is very calm, humble, and personable. most importantly, he actually listens, which is a rarity among docs. i immediately got a good feeling from him and feel confident that i am getting the best quality care. absolutely worth the drive down to mv.

I came here because I broke my humerus while snowboarding in Alaska. I searched online for a good orthopedist and glad I found him!
The office is very cozy and the staff is really great! Dr. Goranson is really great. I would go to the office feeling pain in my arm, but when he gets into the room, my pain just seems to disappear.
Each office visit was reasonably priced (nothing more than you would pay elsewhere for a doctors visit, might be even cheaper).
The only downside is — there are no reminder e-​mails or phone calls, so make sure you remember your appointment, or save the appointment card they give you!

Outstanding Surgeon! Dr Goranson performed an ACL replacement on my knee and the results were very impressive. His office staff is quite nice and easy to work with. His appointments run on-​time and scheduling appointments was extremely accommodating.
Dr Goranson took the time during an exam to answer all questions, give details about the process and instilled my upmost confidence in his ability.
Bottom line– this is the Surgeon you want for his mastery of skill, his modesty as a Doctor and the results you will experience from his work.

After relocating from another state I needed to find a doctor to take over care of my recovering knee brake from ¹¹⁄₂₀₁₀.
I just needed prescription refills, physical therapy refills/​discussion, and general check ups and advice on how to continue getting healthy.
In the end I only had four monthly checkups and then he handed me off to a pain management doctor, not even proposing to see me again to oversee my recovery. In short, it felt like he wrote me off as an at-​risk junkie ‘making up’ my pain.
At first meeting I wasn’t very impressed compared to my previous doctor. The doc was fine and pretty much just smiled and nodded. That’s about all he did in my four visits before he dumped me off on a pain specialist and refused to continue my care.
This suspicion was confirmed when the new pain doctor chuckled after reading the referral from Dr Goranson and asking how I felt I was treated. I said I kind of felt like he thought I was just after med refills. The new doc chuckled and said orthopods don’t do well with believing in pain if they don’t see something ‘broken’ (aka crutches, a cane, etc.).
Thats probably true since I told Dr. Goranson that I was doing really well in my recovery and felt like I was recovering steadily. Only real issue was the extreme afternoon and evening pain.
Also the receptionist was just barely passable in terms of courtesy and service. I think she’s really overwhelmed in addition to just being a bit ‘gruff’.
I would have expected at least one set of xrays to be taken since the paperwork I brought from my last doctor didn’t have any really recent ones.
For completeness, my meds weren’t anything major, two 5 mg oxycodone per day.
To seal the deal, when I was unable to get a timely appointment with the new doctor I was going to be without my prescription for 30 days. I pleaded with Dr. Goranson to do one last refill (a fifth time) but he refused (never returning my persistent calls for several days).
With extreme pain, being denied pain meds for a month is extreme deficiency in care IMHO.
In short, if Dr. Goranson is your doctor for the full surgery and treatment he’s probably fine, but if he doesn’t see you from the very beginning he’ll just assume your trying to use him as your ‘dealer’. I would expect someone in the field a long time to be more caring and sympathetic.
One last thing, at least two of the four times I needed a refill it took me calling several days in a row to get any response that my voice messages were received and that a refill would be done. I ran out of meds at least twice due to this for a day or so.

I just wanted to add that in the past few months I had aggrevated one of my knees (really bad surgeon a number of years ago that messed up and caused lifelong problems) and Dr. Goranson did a great job working with me to make sure that I got through my wedding as pain free as possible and I was able to make our first dance a success (it was an awesome wedding see L.G. Lodge review). We are working on when I’m getting my knee scoped again but at the end of the day I wouldn’t want anyone else working on me.

Saw Dr. Goranson for chronic shoulder pain. In my experience most doctors immediately want to run X-​rays and MRI’s before even listening to the patients description of the problem. Dr. Goranson explained all my options and let me be involved in the decision making process. Highly recommended and this is coming from someone who has dealt with many of the bay area orthopedic surgeons.
Edit: Just want to add I’ve been to his office many times, and am impressed at how professional and friendly the girl that works his front desk is. I’ve listened to her on the phone with patients and she is really good.,

The BEST out there. I have been going to him for about 8 years due to hockey-​related injuries, and he has always gotten me fixed and up-​and-​running in no time!
He has done surgery on my elbow, 2 or 3 surgeries on my mom, & recently did surgery on my step-dad’s shoulder (skiing). Excellent surgeon and I recommend him to everyone.
He is personable, nice, takes the time to actually talk to you and get to the bottom of whatever issue it is. He develops great relationships and everytime I go in it’s almost as much catch-​up as fixing me.
I think I speak for the majority of his patients in that once you see him for something, you’ll never go to another orthopedic surgeon again.

I had a problem with my hip and based on Unilocal reviews went to Dr. Goranson. When I called his office said they accepted Medicare. When I went to the office he spent about three minutes to tell me that he did not handle the kind of problem I had and referred me to another doctor. They billed Medicare $ 130.72 for the three minutes he spent with me. Medicare sent me a check for a little more than $ 90 which I forwarded to them. They then sent me a bill for $ 39.78 balance. Normally I only pay 20% of charges approved by Medicare so this ‘part’ was excessive as was the $ 130 for three minutes. This kind of excessive charge is the reason medical costs in this country are so out of line. Would never go to Dr. Goranson again.

I had a nagging shoulder injury for 4 months that led me to Dr Goranson. MAN I should have been less stubborn and visited him earlier. We had a 15 minute initial visit where he asked me a number of questions regarding my injury and then he ordered up an MRI. He called me once he got the results and suggested a few options, one of which was a cortisone shot. Another appointment for the shot (totally painless, like a flu shot) and 4 days later and BAM! I’m back to 100%. Pain free and back in the gym. Thanks Doc! What a great experience. Highly recommended!

My daughter slid off the bed. She literally just slid of the bed! We were watching Fantastic 4 on Friday night TV, and I see my 5 year old just slide off the bed. I started laughing and asked her «how the heck did you do that?» And then I heard the scream… like no other. I knew something was wrong. So we went to the emergency room (still screaming).
They diagnosed her broken left ring finger. Oh no! She’s going to have to wear big diamonds on that finger so it better be straight! And she has to be a dentist like mommy so she can’t have a lame finger! So after 4 hours in the ER they splint it up and tell us to see an orthopedic surgeon on Monday.
Of course, all doctors offices are closed on the weekend. So on Monday my hubby calls around and some of them say it is a 2 week wait! WTF!
But Dr. Goranson saw her immediately.
He’s so nice and personable! He put my daughter at ease and was telling me about his kids too! Great guy.
But, truthfully, I hope we never have to see him again… just because I don’t ever want to hear that scream again!
Thanks for making my daughter’s diamond finger pretty again.