Since 2000 the annual growth in robotic assisted surgery has increased tremendously. Between 2009 – 2014 the number of procedures performed on the da Vinci platform from Intuitive Surgical has tripled from approximately 40,000 to 120,000[1]. It is not just the number of procedures that is growing, but also the […]
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A few years ago I ran into a surgical colleague who was complaining that his referrals were decreasing. He was convinced that it was a plot by his competition to steal his business. He was also convinced that the hospital was in on it. He described what he was certain […]
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The cheers from our hotel room were apparently heard down the hall. We were on vacation when the results were first available. My wife was checking on the boys in the room next door when she heard me jumping up and down, hooting and hollering in our room. She ran […]
Read MoreThe clinical practice change we implemented was supposed to be easy. It was a simplified version of an Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) program for patients undergoing bowel surgery. It was implemented in 18 hospitals and involved over 100 surgeons. Two key process steps were identified and tracked. They were early ambulation (patients […]
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Unstable and bleeding from multiple gun shot wounds to the abdomen, the patient appeared, to my untrained eyes, a goner. Fortunately for this patient, I was a newbie Intern starting my General Surgery residency and nobody asked for my opinion. My job, as second assistant, was to “hold hooks” and […]
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“They’re refusing to comply, now what do we do?” That was the first thing I heard from one of our facility Chief Medical Officers (CMO) after implementing an Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) Program for bowel surgery across our system. ERAS programs were well established in the literature, so I […]
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It was a packed house. The room was filled with leaders from the operating rooms from across the system. Surgeons, Anesthesiologists and Operating Room Nursing Directors were all there to hear the great debate. The rate of adoption of reprocessed “single use devices” was accelerating across the system and we […]
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