Robotic Surgery Blog: Economics of Robotics Archives

February 20, 2007

Excellent medical blog- From an excellent hospital's CEO

Running a hospital blog entry: da Vinci Uncoded -- or, Surgical Robots Unite!

Here you have it folks -- the problem facing every hospital, and especially every academic medical center. Do I spend over $1 million on a machine that has no proven incremental value for patients, so that our doctors can become adept at using it and stay up-to-date with the "state of the art", so that I can then spend more money marketing it, and so that I can protect profitable market share against similar moves by my competitors?

This entry caught my attention since it discussed robotic surgery.

It is from the blog of the CEO at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He seems to have put together an excellent blog and I look forward to following his decision to purchase or not purchase the robot.

December 5, 2006

Profitability

I agree that the reimbursement for a radical prostatectomy should be more than it is, but that is true for nearly everything we do these days at the hospital. You are paid a little more for the code for a laparoscopic prostatectomy (the code for a dVP) than for an open radical and with experience you can do a dVP in about the time it takes many urologists to do an open (2-3 hours). Granted some folks can do an open in 90 minutes, but, given the lower positive margin rates with the da Vinci and slightly better potency and continence rates, I don't see how anyone can continue to justify doing opens.

April 15, 2006

Profitability of Robotic Surgery: Hospital Perspective

Analysis: Robot's financial impact mixed

Whether a hospital can break even or make a profit with the da Vinci device appears to turn on factors like the specific health plans in a particular market, the mix of Medicare patients, and the efficiency in using the robot. And most facilities seem to lose money at the outset.

"The da Vinci system makes you a better surgeon," Arieh Shalhav, associate professor of surgery and director of minimally-invasive urology at the University of Chicago, told United Press International.

I am extremely pleased that Dr. Shalhav has become one of the top minimally invasive surgeons in the United States. As a 3rd year urology resident in 1999 I had the fortune of working with Dr. Shalhav. He was an excellent teacher and was the first exposure I had to minimally invasive urology. We spent time together performing research in the lab and surgery in the operating room. The majority of the reason why I have been as successful as I have with minimally invasive surgery is what I learned from Dr. Shalhav and the other world class surgeons at Indiana University.

Source: United Press International

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