Minimally Invasive Surgery Deserts: Is There a Role for Robotic Assisted Surgery?

Despite evidence indicating patient and hospital benefits of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) over open surgery, there is still access barriers to MIS. Availability of training and associated learning curve, health literacy, and hospital characteristics (location, size) have been identified as the primary barriers to the adoption of MIS. Robotic assisted surgery could help to overcome some of these barriers and increase access to MIS through easier tele-mentoring and potential for remote access.

An international consensus panel on the potential value of Digital Surgery.

Objectives: The use of digital technology in surgery is increasing rapidly, with a wide array of new applications from presurgical planning to postsurgical performance assessment. Understanding the clinical and economic value of these technologies is vital for making appropriate health policy and purchasing decisions. We explore the potential value of digital technologies in surgery and produce expert consensus on how to assess this value.

Best practice considerations on the assessment of robotic assisted surgical systems: results from an international consensus expert panel.

Background: Health technology assessments (HTAs) of robotic assisted surgery (RAS) face several challenges in assessing the value of robotic surgical platforms. As a result of using different assessment methods, previous HTAs have reached different conclusions when evaluating RAS. While the number of available systems and surgical procedures is rapidly growing, existing frameworks for assessing MedTech provide a starting point, but specific considerations are needed for HTAs of RAS to ensure consistent results.

Exploring Successful Implementation of Organizational Supports at the Worksite Environment: A Mixed Methods Approach.

While there is evidence that organizational supports may lead to better employee health, research on implementing such organizational supports is lacking. This research sought to understand organizational supports and implementation of those supports using an Explanatory Sequential Mixed Methods design approach. Employee survey responses ( = 202) were used to classify organizations into "high" and "low" categories for employee-reported health behavior improvement, agreement, and readiness for implementing change.

Grateful Patient Philanthropy: A Challenge to Organizational Ethics.

An examination of organization development in health care reveals a pattern of increasing reliance of academic medical centers toward new sources of revenue in support of operations. This trend is partly in response to the reduction of traditional funding sources such as public appropriations and tuition. Clinical income from faculty earnings and hospital transfer payments have supplanted heritage funding sources and are now predominantly institutional transactions rather than physician-patient interactions.