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The next story that is coming out may have some serious implications. It pertains to a CSR and GSR who, instructed by management at the end of the quarter to "scrub the books" that means find cases that are not booked robotically and try to convert them to robotic cases. Convinced a OB/GYN fairly early in their learning curve to convert a non robotic case to a robotic case.

Serious complications arose and the patient died. Anyone who works for Intuitive and denies that it is practice to try to convert non robotic cases should look in the mirror.

You can't hide the fact that not long ago before you got hosed in the media you were required to train 2 gyn and 1 general surgeon each quarter. Your plan and review was heavily weighted on the number of trainings and the case output from each training. Your job was on the line if you failed to meet the metrics. You are compensated on how many bodies you can put under the robot each quarter.

Every CSR has one surgeon they trained that should not be doing surgery at all. Yet you convinced this surgeon they would be better on the robot and their practice would flourish if they adopted robotics into their practice. There needs to be a moral gut check with this company.
 






I agree. Good post. I worked for this company from 08-11 and got out once I saw 2 of my hospitals stop using due to patient complications (user error, not robot) and unnecessary costs. I brought it up to management but they did not care. Now the rest of the US is slowly catching on to this Marketing Machine. It's a good concept but pushing it for other simple in/out same day surgery's is crazy. Wall street is catching on also. Stock is cut in half and at an all time low.
 






I agree. I was there from 2010 - early 2013. Pure greed in its simplest form. The 2 GYN and 1 General Surgeon is spot on. Train them every quarter it's "core requirement" translated if you don't you are fired. I'm glad the market is catching on to these clowns. I love watching the stock get slashed. Glad I dumped mine before it crashed. The worst offenders of training anybody that could fog a mirror were Kiscoe, Thomas and Nash. What a group of mental giants those 3 were.
 






Biggest issue has not fully been publicized....number of unnecessary procedures performed by docs trying to get certified. I'm sure those patients would not want to find out they had a procedure they didn't need to help in getting surgeons certified quickly. Also, I'm sure insurance companies and Medicaid would love to know the truth about this practice. Medicaid fraud is criminal. Could be an easy thing to uncover. Simply look at year-over-year numbers of hysterectomies performed by docs during certification training compared with previous years. Numbers will be very telling.
 






Agree. What about the surgeon locator. You have to maintain a certain number of robotic cases or they will not allow you on their marketing website. Telling surgeons that they would be dropped off the locator if they did not maintain cases, regardless the talent of the surgeons.

Now you have low volume surgeons trying to put on unnecessary cases to stay on the website. How dangerous is that. Patients are going to get hurt.
 






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