da vinci costs

All in all there's little difference between open and Davinci. Some say you spend less time in the hospital post davinci. Others say open surgery is better for less incontinence. But both have been proven wrong in some cases here. The skill of the surgeon and experience is what really counts if you choose to go under a knife. I rejected both. There are other options plus don't dismiss possible (QOL) quality of life side effects much more common with either type of radical surgery. .

It would be an interesting challenge to ask those of us who have recently had Da Vinci surgery to say how much it cost without digging through all the paperwork and adding it all up. My bet is that very few of us know. I know I don't. I know how much I paid (that is, how much my insurance didn't cover) but as to the total cost of the procedure I haven't a clue.

I did make an effort to find out how much my adjuvant IMRT treatment cost in total -- idle curiosity since I had long-since reached my out-of-pocket max for the year. It was surprisingly difficult to get the account representative to understand that I wanted to know how much the treatments cost altogether -- not just how much I would have to pay but how much the insurance company was paying too. It's not a question that he usually gets asked. I'm still a bit vague but I think the total for the IMRT treatments was about $110K. My impression is that the DaVinci surgery was about 1/3 of that but I am guessing. I would also have to guess for the cost of the two years of ADT3 hormone therapy (maybe about 20K?)

My total hospital bill was about $51k, but Medicare paid them less than 8k, as I recall. The surgeon billed about 10k, but got paid about 4k. I've noticed in previous discussions here that costs can vary greatly from one area of the country to another.

In any case, it's important to remember that we don't actually "get operated on by this machine." The machine is only a surgical tool. It's the skill of the surgeon that's important. The most sophisticated robotic machine cannot turn a bad surgeon into a good one. If you choose surgery, whether open or robotic, always consider the surgeon's skill as the primary consideration.

My surgeon told me that Medicare paid a flat rate for a Prostatectomy regardless of how it was performed..about $30K total..He would get around $3k (for 5 hours work)..The Anesthesiologist gets about the same as the surgeon. After performing a surgery, the daVinci machine requires hours of specialized clean-up to prepare it for the next surgery..

if i remember right, the "list price", before insurance adjustments, for my open surgery and 4 1/2 days in the hospital was around 95k. i don't remember what the actual payments were in the end, but i do remember, i never had to pay anything out of pocket, which i was glad. was under bcbs at the time.

david