The future of surgery at UBMD: no more operating rooms

Women can soon have outpatient surgeries without going to a hospital at all.

UBMD Obstetrics and Gynecology received a $15,000 grant to purchase equipment that will allow physicians to perform minor outpatient surgeries in-office.

“If you’re a woman and you’re having abnormal bleeding, we can look inside the uterus, just look, and maybe take a little biopsy,” said Dr. Tova Ablove.

She’s works at UBMD Obstetrics-Gynecology, specializing in female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery and urogynecology.

She says this program will allow her to help patients who may have barriers to scheduling necessary surgical procedures because it will be less cumbersome to schedule as opposed to outpatient surgery in a hospital. 

“It’s not very long, [in a hospital] you’d have to go through admissions, you get a hospital bill, you can’t leave without having someone come to get you.”

Billing for an outpatient surgery is also a lot more expensive than what this program will allow for.

It can be billed as an office procedure, as opposed to a surgery.

“There may be providers in Buffalo that offer procedures in the office, but they’re not in downtown Buffalo.”

This is not a program meant for high risk, or non-routine procedures.

“If I’m going to be operating where I’m worried about bleeding, or anything like that, this program that we started has nothing to do with that.”

Things like a misplaced IUD, collecting a sample to biopsy for abnormal bleeding, or a DNC for an early miscarriage are all things that would fall under the program’s ability to do procedures in-office.

This program is expected to be operational by early 2019, but women can schedule now to be on the books ahead of the launch. 

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