Herb the robot, new hospitalist program to be led by Dr. James Gude

Published: Wednesday, September 17, 2008 2:58 PM PDT
By David Abbott, Sonoma West Staff Writer

SEBASTOPOL — Palm Drive Hospital is going to ramp up its hospitalist program next month by adding doctors and a robot named Herb.

“We’re forming a holistic team comprised of internists and specialists on internal medicine and hospital medicine,” said Doctor James Gude, director of the hospital’s ICU and now of its hospitalist program.

A hospitalist coordinates care during a patient’s stay so that there is continuity of care from the time the patient is admitted to the time he or she leaves.

Herb is a 220-pound, five-foot tall robot that Dr. Gude can operate anywhere he has an Internet connection, from his office at Palm Drive to his kitchen at home.

The robot will be a tool for specialists, doctors Jonathan Morse, Terri Turner and Kokeb Teshome who will act as the core of the program.

They will be ai ded by family doctors, John Canova, David Fishman, Gregory Rosa, Nancy Davidson, Michael Holmes, Rhonda Berney, James Shubin, and Richard Powers that Dr. Gude hopes will offer a unique hospital service that will enhance the availability of sub-specialists.

Robotic telemetry will allow the doctors to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and give them better access to their patients.

Dr. Gude also hopes that the new technology will expand the hospital’s reach and open new markets to enhance its financial viability.

“The system began in July 2007,” Dr. Gude said. “We reopened the ICU with it. It’s being used in Willits, Healdsburg, and we’ll be starting in Ukiah Oct. 1.”

Dr. Gude believes the new system will make Palm Drive more attractive to new talent as well as to new patients.

It will allow the hospital to have services for gastroneurology, psychology, pediatric emergency services with a direct connection to Oakland Children’s Hospital and California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) in San Francisco through the telemetrics and the hospital’s new helipad.

“We have some talented individuals combined with technology right here at Palm Drive,” Dr. Gude said. “It’s a pretty unique situation.”

PDH administrators also hope to create a program that reaches out to skilled nursing facilities and to that end they’re going to start a trial program with Mirabel Lodge in Forestville.

“We’re pioneering new concepts of the way the hospital connects with the community,” Dr. Gude said. “With this system, an infectious disease consultant can see the patient via the robot. It’s like virtually being there.”

As the hospital works its way out of Chapter 9 bankruptcy, it hopes to find a niche with telemetry that will expand from its ICU to the emergency room, the new 1206D clinic, and now with the hospitalist program.

Dr. Gude also hopes to start a school of robotic telemetry next year offering one-week courses to ICU nurses and physicians, and offering seminars in order to spread the system to other places.

“I’m going to Louisville , KY to work with rural KY ICUs. We’re sending consultants there.

“We’ll be able to care for patients right at home, offer a medical home with the hospitalists. They’re excellent physicians.

“This is not only for patients, but for physicians and in-patient specialists. It’ll be seamless care, shorten the length of stay, lower mortality, less cost.

“The hospitalist program isn’t the news here, it’s robotic telemetry,” said CEO James Russell. “Once we get the school going people will come here, and it will give us another source of revenue.”

The robotic telemetry system was created six years ago in Santa Barbara by InTouch Health and first used at the UCLA hospital in Los Angeles.

Dr. Gude’s Off Site Care is also working to establish networks in New Zealand, Japan and India.