With 48 million Americans living with arthritic disease, what is a non-profit to do? This year doctors with Hofmann Arthritis Institute donated their time and expertise to provide free hip and knee replacements. They treated eight patients, individuals from Utah and Idaho who did not have health insurance, as part of Operation Walk USA 2012.The joint replacement operations included all level of treatments at no cost to the patients.

The no-cost surgeries are performed once a year at Salt Lake Regional Medical Center and the Center for Precision and Joint Replacements by staff and orthopedic surgeons from the Hofmann Institute.

This year Park City, Utah, cab driver Bill Schmitt was one of the recipients of a new hip. As recounted by Brittany Green-Miner, of Salt Lake City Fox News, Schmitt received a hip replacement just one month after he first learned about the program. Schmitt explained, “These girls that I had driven up to Stein Erickson Lodge at the end of the night saw me get out of my vehicle to open the door for them and noticed that I was walking with a crutch. They asked me what the circumstance was, and I told them that there was no cartilage in my right hip and it had been going on for six years and they said, ‘We have somebody you have to meet, ’ and that was the Hofmann Institute.” For more about Operation Walk USA, visit www.opwalkusa.com.