2020 Volume 58 Pages 1-7
In 2018, the Robotic Surgery Center was established at our institution for developing robot-assisted surgeries to ensure safe and highly efficient procedures. With the establishment of this center, guidelines from the academic association that ensures patient safety were followed; efforts were made to improve the skills of surgeons; and a multi-disciplinary operational team including anesthesiologists, nurses, and clinical engineers was formulated. As the cost of robots supporting surgeries is high and the consumables required and robot maintenance are also costly, the Robotic Surgery Center is responsible for improving surgical techniques, sharing information across various medical departments, and ensuring sound management. The Robotic Surgery Center has been appropriately scheduling surgeries under collaboration among Surgery divisions, Department of Anesthesiology in the Central Operation rooms. The number of surgeries has steadily increased to 266 in the fiscal year 2018, including 198 surgeries in the Department of Urology, 46 in the Department of Surgery, and 22 in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Although these surgeries were minimally invasive, safe, and highly useful, the associated costs were high. Thus, the financial management is an important issue that this center needs to tackle in the future.
