List date(s) this work was published or aired.
7/8/2012
Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
– Robo Docs: Use of costly surgical robots booming. Sidebar: Surgical robot is big for tiny hospital: A look at the much-hyped da Vinci surgical robot, which gives surgeons new abilities, but also costs a pile and can cause serious injuries in the hands of those not well trained. The sidebar is a frank look at the realities of medical economics that forced a tiny, small-town hospital to purchase a robot that cost twice as much as its net revenue.
Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
– Robo Docs: I used hospital 990s to get a big picture, particularly with respect to the tiny hospital that bought a robot, checked hospital advertising relating to robots, and found studies that looked at the advertising. I got claim data on robotic surgeries from insurers and Medicare. With Justin Mayo, our data guru, we pulled and analyzed all the reports of injuries or deaths from the federal adverse event database to look at the types of injuries involving robots. I looked at lawsuits here and elsewhere, and studies from all sorts of specialty journals. I searched Nexis/Lexis, training information and technical documents, including the FDA/device approval documents.
Explain types of human sources used.
– Robo Docs: Surgeons, both critics and advocates; hospital administrators, officials of the company that makes the robot, those who train other docs on the robot, officials of company that makes a training simulator, insurance company medical directors and others, Dr. Marty Makary, who looked at robotic surgery stats for his (then) upcoming book, Unaccountable. I talked with lawyers who represented patients hurt during robotic surgeries.
Results:
NA
Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
– Robo Docs (mainbar): According to hospitals and published information, the initial purchase of the robot was much as $2.6 million, which is how I phrased it. The company said I should have used the base price of $1.3 to $2.25 million, because the $2.6 million price tag includes instruments, add-ons such as a training module, and technical support (which is required). We published a correction listing the base price range.
Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
– Robo docs: Start early. Even though, relatively speaking, there wasn’t much research on comparative safety/effectiveness of robotic surgery/, to take a sharp look at a device requires wading through a lot of material.