Celebrating 20 Years of Robotic Surgery at Community Memorial

2025 marks a special anniversary for Community Memorial Healthcare. We’ll be celebrating 20 years of robotic-assisted surgery at our Ventura hospital. In 2005, Community Memorial became the first hospital between Los Angeles and San Francisco to acquire the da Vinci™ surgical system, and we’ve never looked back. In fact, we can’t stop looking ahead to the latest technological enhancements and surgical techniques, with our brilliant surgeons leading the way.

The original physician champion of our Robotics Program was Marc Beaghler, MD, who also served for many years as Community Memorial’s Medical Director of Robotic Surgery. Dr. Beaghler, along with Cedric Emery, MD, and General Surgeons Constanze Rayhrer, MD, and Gus Iwasiuk, MD, were the original pioneers of Robotic Surgery at Community Memorial Hospital – Ventura. Dr. Beaghler recalls widespread initial support for acquiring the da Vinci™ robot. However, there were detractors. One particular naysayer predicted that “The robot will sit in the back of the operating room and serve as a coat hanger.” As Dr. Beaghler puts it, “I knew he was wrong and spent many years proving him wrong!” At the time (2004), only large academic institutions had robots, but Dr. Beaghler and his colleagues believed robotic surgery could revolutionize the treatment of prostate cancer as well as minimally invasive surgery.

Today, more than 90% of radical prostatectomies in the U.S. are performed robotically. What’s more, the robotics revolution has impacted the entire field of surgery, enhancing safety and accuracy for gastrointestinal, urological, gynecological, prostate, spine, knee, lung, and cardiovascular procedures.

Thanks to refinements in robotic platforms and GPS technology, surgeons can now perform complex procedures, many of them minimally invasively, with greater control and precision than ever before. Robotic surgery has been hugely beneficial for both surgeons and, most importantly, patients. Patients experience less blood loss and post-operative pain and their risk of infection is reduced. Hospital stays are shorter and people can recover and return to their normal activities sooner. Scarring at the small incision sites is minimal once healing is complete.

Thanks to the collaboration between our surgeons and the hospital administration, our Robotics Program has gotten more robust and more diverse. Our experts currently work with three different robotic surgical platforms:  

• The Intuitive da Vinci™ system, used for a variety of general and gynecological procedures  
• The ROSA® Robotic Total Knee & Hip Replacement System, created for total and partial knee and hip replacement surgeries
• The Globus ExcelsiusGPS™, specifically designed to operate on the spine

As amazing as these technologies are, they are only sophisticated tools without a seasoned surgeon at the helm. There’s no substitute for experience — our doctors have spent countless hours mastering a wide range of robotic procedures. As of this writing, we have more than 25 surgeons with robotic training and expertise, and perform more than 1,400 robotic procedures a year.