A word of caution: it depends on your shoulder problem. A simple dislocation is about the easiest shoulder surgery there is. The shoulder is the most complex joint in the body.
I have been diagnosed with a partial rotator cuff tear from an ungainly off on a motorcycle a couple of years ago. It hurts, but I have a high pain tolerance and thought it would get better. It hasn't, in fact, has gotten worse from swimming and weight lifting to the point I can't do either. MRI confirmed the bad news: it really needs to be surgically repaired.
But every doc, top-level folks with deep relationships to the Dominican medical community, say that of all the surgical skills in the DR, complex orthopedic surgery is very lacking. Not ONE would suggest a local "hombro" surgeon, Santiago, POP or Santo Domingo. In fact, one doc said he shattered his shoulder in a motorcycle crash, had it diagnosed locally, and went to Orlando for repair at the suggestion of colleagues.
The reason? There isn't that much shoulder surgery going on in the DR for surgeons to refine their skills, except for the most basic cases. The example I was given was the group who did his surgery does 40 shoulders a week, almost an assembly line. Contrast this number with shoulder surgeons in the DR who might perform 5 a month.
I was told that this group of shoulder surgeons in Orlando, led by a Dominican out of Florida Hospital, will accept MRI's and pre-op cardiology exams from the DR in advance, will schedule a surgery slot in advance with a pre-surgery exam the afternoon before, do an early morning surgery, keep the patient a day---if needed---in the hospital, and out the next day for travel back to the DR. The DR has plenty of rehab centers.
It's almost "reverse surgery tourism."
So if highly regarded local docs won't have their colleagues do shoulder surgery, perhaps one needs to think twice about it.