CSS prepares robotic telesurgery expansion to provinces

Panama's Social Security Fund (CSS) is making a significant leap in healthcare accessibility by expanding its robotic telesurgery program to provincial regions. This ambitious initiative seeks to bring specialized and high-complexity medical procedures closer to patients, thereby reducing the burden of travel to the capital for essential care.

Marcos Young, the CSS's national executive director for Health Services and Benefits, highlighted the historic nature of the first telesurgery performed by the institution. This marks a key step in a strategy to progressively broaden access to advanced medical technology. The program involves training multidisciplinary teams in various regions to perform these procedures locally.

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Our objective is to extend this program to the rest of the country, with an initial focus on oncological care, to bring high-complexity surgeries closer to both insured and uninsured individuals, starting in the province of Chiriquí.

Chiriquí province is slated to be the initial recipient of this expanded service, with a primary focus on oncological care. The program plans to incorporate general surgery interventions, such as gallbladder and hernia operations, as regional teams gain experience. Specialists from the City of Health in Panama City will be able to remotely assist in more complex cases.

Following Chiriquí, the Hospital Dr. Gustavo Nelson Collado in Herrera province is the next planned expansion site. The CSS emphasizes that a core objective is to decentralize complex surgical procedures, allowing patients to receive specialized treatment near their homes and families. Young stated that the system is democratizing access to technology, noting that this capability is currently unmatched in any private hospital in Panama or the wider Central America and Caribbean region.

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We are democratizing access to technology. Once again, the public system leads innovation, because this capability does not currently exist in any private hospital in Panama or Central America or the Caribbean.