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How a Texas Hospital Expanded Robotic Surgery Access,
Improved Utilization, and Increased Volume
In early 2023, a 300+ bed hospital in northeastern Texas recognized both a challenge and an opportunity within its surgical services program. Facing limited access to robotic time during busy weekday schedules, surgeons sought to alleviate bottlenecks by opening time for cases on the weekends.
Hospital executives decided to expand access to enhance surgeon satisfaction and give patients more opportunities for a minimally invasive procedure. However, staffing limitations—particularly in the Sterile Processing Department (SPD)—posed a significant barrier. Adding weekend access would require a reliable, highly-trained surgical support presence to ensure safe, efficient operations and guarantee that weekend robotic cases would be performed with the same quality and timeliness as weekday procedures.
To meet this need, the hospital expanded its partnership with Surgical Solutions, leveraging our specialized staffing capabilities, lean process knowledge, robotic surgery expertise, and ability to scale coverage without requiring the hospital to add full-time staff.
with an estimated reimbursement of more than
estimated reimbursement
per case
The hospital’s goals were clear:
Surgical Solutions worked alongside perioperative leadership to develop and execute a comprehensive plan to support increased robotic access through a combination of scheduled and on-call weekend staffing, supported by operational enhancements that ensured a weekday-equivalent experience for surgeons and patients.
Key components included:
A mix of scheduled and on-call shifts gave the hospital flexible yet reliable coverage. Surgical Solutions provided an experienced team trained on the hospital’s workflows, equipment configurations, and surgeon preferences.
To keep SPD from being a limiting factor, Surgical Solutions collaborated with the hospital team to align our technicians’ weekend availability for instrument readiness. This ensured robotic trays were processed, assembled, and ready to support weekend case volumes safely and efficiently.
A core principle of the intervention was that weekend cases must run like weekday cases as much as possible. Surgical Solutions identified and implemented workflow improvements that minimized or eliminated delays—ensuring predictable room turnover and readiness for first-case on-time starts (FCOTS), a key measure of consistency.
The impact of the weekend robotics program is clear. Over the weekends covered, the hospital successfully completed 112 robotic cases, averaging 2.5 cases per available weekend.
In addition to alleviating weekday backlogs and giving surgeons greater scheduling flexibility, the expanded access contributed meaningfully to hospital revenue. The weekend cases resulted in an estimated $725,578* in reimbursement (approximately $6,478 per case) without adding new full-time positions or increasing overtime burden on existing staff.
Importantly, the ROI extended beyond revenue:
This case demonstrates how a targeted, well-supported weekend strategy can unlock significant value for hospitals already equipped with robotic technology but facing weekday capacity constraints.
By partnering with Surgical Solutions, the hospital was able to expand surgeon access, improve utilization of its robotic platform, and generate substantial additional revenue—without hiring additional staff or compromising operational quality.
This demonstrates how weekend robotics can be a key component of a hospital’s long-term growth strategy, and the model is fully scalable for other hospitals looking to grow volume while maintaining operational consistency and financial efficiency.
* Estimated value calculated using Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services published reimbursement rates for the procedures performed based on the APC Payment System or lowest-acuity multiplier from the MS-DRG Payment System. Actual results may vary.
