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Piedmont Healthcare hits surgical milestone

Piedmont Healthcare’s Minimally Invasive & Robotic Surgery Program recently celebrated its 15,000th robotic surgery, according to a press release. That’s a milestone for the program that is one of only a handful of large volume robotic programs in the country and that also ranks in the top 20 percent globally in the number of robotic procedures it performs, according to the release.

As a system, Piedmont Healthcare performs about 3,500 surgeries per year, with 1,400 of them at Piedmont Atlanta, which has three robotic surgical systems. The program is among the busiest in the nation and ranks within the top 10 percent of Southeast Regional Integrated Delivery Networks. It also ranks in the top five nationally in the number of cases among Hepatobiliary programs. As a single institution, Piedmont Atlanta Hospital does the second-highest number of robotic colorectal surgeries in the country.

Among Piedmont’s 11 hospitals, seven are equipped with the da Vinci Surgical System for a total of nine surgical robots across the system. In addition to Piedmont Atlanta, the other hospitals that are part of the program are:

■ Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center

■ Piedmont Columbus Regional (at its Midtown campus)

■ Piedmont Fayette Hospital (which had Piedmont’s first robotic system, starting in 2009)

■ Piedmont Newnan Hospital

■ Piedmont Rockdale Hospital

■ Piedmont Walton Hospital Information: piedmont.org