CL-10: CHARITY ROBOTICS: REACH OR REALISTIC? TAILORING INDIVIDUALIZED CARE TO THE UNINSURABLE
Autefeh Sajjadi, MS, Thomas Gillespie, MD, FACS; Creighton University School of Medicine
Background: Core principles of medical education include service-based learning and community outreach. Our medical school offers a surgical clinic for uninsurable patients. The mission of this clinic is to individualize each patientâs care regardless of socioeconomic, insurance, or documentation status. Accordingly, robotic, laparoscopic or open surgical approaches should be selected based on patient presentation and indications only. Our hypotheses is that offering indicated robotic surgeries to uninsurable populations was beneficial and cost effective
Methods: Surgical candidates, recommended to the charity surgical clinic from a consortium of medical clinics, were evaluated by medical students and attendings blinded to the patients insurance status. If robotic surgery was recommended, the care plan was submitted to the institutional charity committee for approval
Results: This year, three patients received recommendations for robotic surgery. A robotic cholecystectomy and two robotic hernia repairs were performed with good outcomes in a cost-effective manne
Conclusions: Ideally, individualized care of patients should be based on guidelines and best practices. The emergence of robotic surgery as an option to offer individualized care should therefore be considered as a treatment option in the evaluation of uninsurable patients. The benefits of robotic surgery were actualized in three patients in a cost effective manner.