St. David’s Health Care had made an announcement to the effect that the nation’s first Robotic Institute University called the Texas Institute of Robotic Surgery would be begun at its North Austin Medical Center.
Here, the best practices for surgical and hospital teams participating in robotic assisted surgery would be taught. This Institute would be a center that would combine International treatment, clinical research and training in robotic assisted surgery.
According to C. David Huffstutler, CEO and President of St. David’s, Robotic surgery continued to grow at a breakneck speed and this Institute would not only attract more patients but also surgical teams and physicians who would like to refine or polish their skills. Randy Fagin, a famous robotic surgery specialist was recruited by the North Austin Medical Center to be the Chief Administration Officer. His role would be to help in recruiting other well known robotic- assisted surgeons with different specialties and also develop and create programs to enhance the patient care quality and develop training programs for hospital teams and physicians. According to Fagin, this institute’s focus would go much beyond the operating room to cover training and research and that it would be the first of its kind in the whole world.
Fagin has served for Intuitive Surgical as Senior Medical Advisor, where he has performed over 2100 robotic- assisted surgeries along with training surgeons from all over the world. For getting treatment from Fagin, patients from 32 states and 12 countries travel to the hospital. According to Don Wilkerson, CEO of St. David’s, it was a great honor to get Dr Fagin to be a part of this institute.
The courses at the RIU would begin by summer 2011 and plans were also on for it to expand it to other facilities in the St. David’s Health Care Umbrella in the future.