Surgery initiatives, objectives for 2026
By Adam Bulter, MD, FACS, Chief & Medical Director of Surgery, Good Samaritan
We have many new initiatives and areas of focus for 2026.
At the beginning of the year, we merged our scheduling and block time guidelines to align with Intermountain standards. Please review the new policy by clicking here.
We also updated our colorectal bundle. If you perform colorectal cases, please review these guidelines, which were amended to the national standards in an attempt to continue to provide the best-possible care and limit our colon infections.
Two major initiatives for 2026 are reducing turnover time and optimizing our OR schedule. The first step of this project started in 2025: focusing on first-case on-time starts. While we had a brief improvement, we are again falling below 50% of our first cases starting on time.
Reminder: If first cases are late, it negatively impacts the OR for the remainder of the day and leads to poor patient experiences. Please make sure your patients are consented, your orders are in and, from your standpoint, you're ready to go at least 10 minutes prior to your scheduled start time!
We would like to offer a warm welcome to our new surgeons and APPs, especially those in our new service line, Vascular Surgery, who already are tackling some major cases. Welcome to the team!
Finally, I would like to end with some great news: Our first dV5 da Vinci robot arrives today, Thursday, Feb. 12, with plans to start first cases on the new consoles next week! Our second robot will arrive at the beginning of March.
We are now the first hospital in the north Denver-metro area to have the newest da Vinci robotics! All surgeons using this technology will need to complete Intuitive's online modules and have an in-person session on the new robot PRIOR to Wednesday, March 4! If you do not complete these steps, you will not be able to perform cases with these tools.
Please follow the steps below prior to the deadline.
Log into your My Intuitive app or access Intuitive's website from your computer or laptop and complete the training. Please click here for registration instructions.
Schedule your in-person training with Intuitive's Melissa Kostiuk at melissa.kostiuk@intusurg.com.
Send your completed certificate to Angel Archer in our Medical Staff Office at angel.archer@imail.org.
As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Thank you for your partnership! I look forward to working with you during what promises to be an exciting and successful year.