2 4 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • M A R C H 2 0 1 9
Our physician group's under-construction
surgery center is scheduled to open in 9
short months, which doesn't leave us
much time to trial and purchase the
equipment that will fill its 6 ORs. It's also
been a challenge to get surgeons from
different private practices and who have
varying levels of experience and expertise
— not to mention strong opinions — to
agree on which instruments and equip-
ment to buy for the new facility.
To foster a meeting of the minds, we
first scheduled comparison trials of need-
ed equipment, which each surgeon rated
based on their assessments of its func-
tionality and usability. For example, they
Surgeons See
Eye to Eye Before They Buy
• TOOL TIME Asking surgeons to participate in the equipment planning
process helps identify which products to purchase.
EQUIPMENT PLANNING
might give a high-
definition video sys-
tem strong marks for
image quality, but low
grades for user intu-
itiveness.
After the trials, we
met as a group to
discuss the average
ratings for each item
under consideration.
We tried to focus the
discussions on data-
driven surgical
results achieved
through the use of
the equipment and
emphasized how
devices could help us
provide cost-effective
care and improve
outcomes.
Each surgeon then
voted to move forward
with the purchase of
proposed equipment
or nix it from consid-
eration. If a product
scored well on sur-
