Dr. Alexander Rosemurgy Makes The Case For Expanding Access To Robotic Surgery

Alexander Rosemurgy, MD, FACS, an advanced foregut and HPB surgeon at AdventHealth Tampa’s Digestive Health Institute (DHI), spoke at the 4^thannual Intuitive 360 conference. The event was held in Aventura, Florida, October 10 – 12, 2019 and attended by more than 900 surgeons, hospital administrators, and operating room nurses and technicians from all over the country. At the conference, they were seeking to learn how to more effectively manage their robotic surgery programs.

Ensuring the success of robotic surgery programs means that more patients can receive minimally invasive operations, which could give them faster, easier recoveries with less pain and risk for complications. The conference was sponsored by Intuitive Surgical, the makers of the da Vinci Surgical System. The da Vinci is a surgical robot that allows a surgeon to precisely move very small surgical tools in a closed operation that requires only a few small incisions. For some organs that cannot be operated on with laparoscopic minimally invasive techniques, the surgical robot has transformed surgery. For example, because of the da Vinci robot, surgeons at DHI can offer some patients minimally invasive liver, pancreatic, or esophageal surgery.

More Robotic Surgery Can Improve a Hospital’s Performance Data

In a breakout presentation entitled “Justifying Access to the da Vinci Through Data and Metrics,” Dr. Rosemurgy addressed how a good robotic surgery program can support the “Quadruple Aim” that healthcare leaders are concerned about. As its name implies, this aim has four concerns: (1) improving the patient experience, (2) improving the health of the population a hospital serves, (3) reducing healthcare costs and (4) ensuring health care provider satisfaction.

Dr. Rosemurgy showed that hospitals would be smart to make it easier for patients and surgeons to have access to the da Vinci surgical robot if they wish to improve their performance in the Quadruple Aim areas.

Helping Surgeons Get More Access to the Surgical Robot to Benefit Their Patients

Robotic surgeons and their future patients also benefitted from Dr. Rosemurgy’s talk. He instructed surgeons about how to use data to effectively make the case to their own hospital leaders that more operating room time should be devoted to robotic surgery. Also, he argued that all surgical specialties – General, HPB, Gynecologic, etc. – that have surgeons trained to use the surgical robot should have ample access it for the greater benefit of their patients.

The routine participation of DHI’s surgeons at conferences such as Intuitive 360 shows their commitment to furthering the knowledge and practice of minimally invasive surgery so that more and more patients can reap its benefits.

Together, Dr. Alexander Rosemurgy, and his colleagues, Dr. Sharona Ross and Dr. Iswanto Sucandy, have the busiest robotic pancreatic and liver surgery program in the United States. Additionally, they are also one of the busiest minimally invasive esophageal surgery programs, including robotic-assisted surgery. Combined, our surgeons have presented at 14 national, professional conferences and surgery meetings, publishing over ten manuscripts and chapters. They also have presented more than ten videos of robotic operations at national professional society meetings.

If you need surgery, consider making appointment with a surgeon who can offer a minimally invasive approach. Minimally invasive surgery can make recovery a lot easier. For more information, please contact us.