Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Special Outpatient Surgery Edition - Megatrends - January 2018

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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4 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 • J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8 procedures within the next decade. "The analogy is a driverless car," he says. "Car manufacturers have slowly added incremental driverless features, such as self-parking, going-out-of-lane warnings and back-up cameras. The advances will eventually lead to the development of a truly driverless car." Those types of features will be added to robotic systems over the next 5 to 10 years, according to Dr. Schabowsky. That means surgeons will be involved with preoperative planning and super- vising robots during surgery, but the robots will be able to do the surgery entirely on their own. — Brielle Gregory forward-thinking peers and increased demand from patients who want their procedures performed in facilities that have invested in the tech- nology. "If you want to stay competitive in spine," says Dr. Vanichkachorn, "you need to use robotics at your facility." Budget-friendly bots The issue isn't whether or not surgeons are on board with robotic- assisted surgery; it's whether their facilities can afford it. So the ques- tion becomes: How do they convince their hospital or ASC to invest in the technology? Leadership at St. Cloud Orthopedics didn't think they could afford to add a robotic-arm surgical platform for use during knee and hip replacements. They were right. Turns out they could afford two. The facility's general partner analyzed the expected growth of joint replacement business and how many cases the practice could add through marketing the robot. That analysis eventually gave the facility the green light on the purchase. The practice's return on investment was better than anticipated because St. Cloud's surgeons were early adopters of the technology. "Patient demand was there and grew, and

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