We've Got the Bots."
American healthcare is big business, a big part of which is market-
ing. Differentiating yourself in an increasingly crowded and competi-
tive market is crucial. "Minimally invasive" already resonates positive-
ly with the population, and now manufacturers and medical centers
alike are marketing robot-assisted surgery to consumers.
We've been using robots to assist with surgeries for 20 years, and
we've had an excellent experience with them. They help me perform
safer, more accurate surgeries. We've seen improvements in care —
more efficient OR times, shorter lengths of stay, quicker recoveries, low-
ered risks of infection, less pain, less blood loss, less scarring and other
trauma, the list goes on. Getting better outcomes adds up to significant
cost reductions over time. And obviously, the more patients you care for
with the robot, the faster you'll make back the initial outlay.
The next level of care
My main hospital, Hackensack (N.J.) University Medical Center, has 5
Intuitive da Vinci robots. We've bought every one of their iterations,
and we've gotten very good with them. It's a very refined system.
However, as chairman of surgery at one of our satellite hospitals,
Pascack Valley Medical Center, I was asked, "What's the next step for
us as a hospital? What can we do in terms of tech and being on the
forefront?" We could have bought another da Vinci, of course, but we
would've been like most other hospitals in the state. We wouldn't be
adding anything new. I wanted to try something different to see if we
could progress even further.
In March, we acquired the only other FDA-approved robotic system
for abdominal surgeries, the TransEnterix Senhance. We're one of the
first U.S. sites to acquire one. Over the last several months, we've
been trying it for a wide variety of general surgery cases. We've suc-
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