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Shares of Intuitive Surgical (ISRG -11%) plunge at the close on news that it's being probed by...
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Thursday, February 28, 4:19 PM ETShares of Intuitive Surgical (ISRG -11%) plunge at the close on news that it's being probed by U.S. regulators over the safety of its robots. The regulators have contacted surgeons at key hospitals, requesting that they list any complications they may have seen with ISRG's surgical robots.
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This news story has 14 comments:
Anyone read the Taylor case in Citron report?
A marketeer with no medical background in charge of a training program for doctor's who never used a robot?
No problem, the 9 week long training of the sales force more than offset the 1 day of surgeon training . No, that't not backwards...
There were training the sales team 9 times longer than the surgeon's on sophisticated robotic equipment.
Suggesting, not found to be in writing/emails yet, to a major hospital that the robot was FDA approved, when it was not.
These guys ought to be in the marketing dept of Groupon or Living Social not next to the Doctor in the operating room.
I would be laughing out loud now if this was all a joke. My sympathies to the gentlemen on SA whose family is effected by this and Taylor family as well
Please explain all the tests they passed?
Sincerely speaking, i am glad your surgery went well.
The Dr know longer uses the Robot
The first occurrence is shoddy journalism by Bloomberg with an inflammatory title having little, if anything, to do with the facts of the story reported. The federal exercise is a survey to doctors asking them about their experiences with the da Vinci technology, and where they thought it best be used. It is not a “probe”, and which connotes wrongdoing or impropriety. There was not a shred of a hint of an accusation in the story that ISRG’s robotics are unsafe, much less any evidence that they are not safe. In fact, there was a study published in the news last week or the week before that the incidence of infection or other complications were statistically on par with traditional surgeries. The implication of the story was that those incidents should be less given the additional cost and precision of the surgeries, not that robotic surgery posed a greater threat to patients.
The second is the hyper-skittishness of this market that sends all investors, retail and institutional, sophisticated and novices, stampeding towards the exits like a mindless herd of cattle at the first whiff of bad news. ISRG fell $63.63 today because of a gross overreaction to a non-story. Gone are the days where investors were more patient, more analytical, more thoughtful, and showed more restraint and intestinal fortitude in making and monitoring their investments. We have all seen example after example of this today. We have seen it with AAPL, PCLN, QCOR, and others and now ISRG. So I guess this is the new norm. Makes investing more dramatic than it needs to be. ISRG will bounce back because there was no there there.
The longer term threat to ISRG, and it is real, is Obamacare. When cost considerations become the driving force on whether procedures will be authorized and paid for or not, it will spell the end to highly technical solutions, and medicines, that do not deliver a result equal to their added costs. Robotic surgeries are far more expensive than standard procedures; e.g., a standard hysterectomy is about $3,000 where as a robotic one is about $9,000. Uncle Sam is not going to be willing to pay that differential when the results are comparable. But that is a topic for another day.