Resuscitating Palm Drive

Financially troubled Palm Drive Hospital is reopening its intensive care unit Thursday, hoping to attract new patients and new revenue with its specially constructed operating tables, state-of-the-art monitors and a robot named Herb.

The ICU, which cares for critically ill patients, has been closed for almost a year. Palm Drive officials believe reopening the five-bed unit could bring in as much as $4 million annually for the money-losing hospital.

"We're creating a mechanism for Palm Drive to be solvent," said Dr. James Gude, the critical care specialist who will direct the ICU. "It will bring in sick patients and give them the best of care and enable surgeons to use the hospital again."

The cost of reopening the ICU, estimated at $350,000, is being borne by Kaiser Permanente. The Kaiser Foundation has sent a check for $100,000, and Kaiser Medical Center in Santa Rosa has pledged to send $250,000 worth of outpatient surgeries, said Jim Sato, Palm Drive's chief executive.

"That is a very, very nice thing they're doing for us," Sato said. "They didn't have to do a thing. But I think they're community-minded and they thought they should help us out."

Palm Drive, which went into bankruptcy in April, has lost $19 million over the past six years. Last August, the hospital board decided to save some money by closing the intensive care unit.

The unit was averaging less than one patient a day at the time it closed, but nurses had to be kept on duty around the clock. Patients were transferred to other hospitals because it was difficult to get Santa Rosa specialists to come to Sebastopol.

But the decision backfired. Physicians were uneasy performing surgeries without an ICU as backup, and ambulance companies were more comfortable taking their patients to full-service hospitals.

Instead of saving $1 million a year by closing the ICU, Palm Drive saw its revenues drop by more than $2 million.

Since the 2006 decision, Palm Drive's CEO has resigned and three board members have stepped down. Reopening the ICU is a key part of the new management team's plan to bring Palm Drive to solvency.

"We're very excited about having it open," said Linda Johnson, president of the Palm Drive board of directors. "We'll be able to provide the quality of care that is so important for the people in West County. Ambulances won't bypass us because we don't have an ICU."

The refurbished, freshly painted ICU is a big step forward for the 37-bed hospital.

Palm Drive's ICU will part of a network that Gude is creating in 10 small Northern California hospitals. Each hospital will have access to specialists 24 hours a day through its own robot, which serves as the bedside eyes and ears of an offsite physician.

The 200-pound, 5-foot 6-inch tall robots can be wheeled around the ICU to stand next to any patient. The offsite doctor and the patient can see and talk to each other through the robot, which can also conduct exams and relay test results to the doctor.

The robots have been available for less than a year and are leased for $4,000 a month by InTouch Health in Santa Barbara.

Each of Gude's robots is named for a famous physician in history. Herb is named for William Heberden, an 18th century physician whose writings laid the foundation for modern diagnosis of disease.

Gude has already contracted with specialists in cardiology, pediatric critical care, gastroenterology, neurology, nephrology and infectious disease control, who will be on call to the small hospitals 24 hours a day.

Healdsburg Hospital, Willits Hospital and Palm Drive Hospital have their robots and are already part of the network. Gude is reaching out to a half-dozen other small hospitals, including Mendocino Coast Hospital and Sonoma Valley Hospital.

"American medical care is excellent, it just has to be gotten to people," Gude said. "Now we have the technology to deliver world-class consultations to a patient anywhere."

Gude is asking Sutter Medical Center, where he currently directs the intensive care unit, for a grant to get the network going. The contracts for the robots and the specialists were made through Gude's newly formed company, Offsite Care, Inc.

The arrangement gives Palm Drive both the technology and the specialist consultations it had lacked in the past.

"We felt we did good care in the old ICU, but we lacked some of the technological advances and some of the equipment was getting out of date." said Lori Austin, Palm Drive director of nursing. "Sometimes we had to ship people I would have liked to have kept to other hospitals."

"Now we will have the best technology in the county -- the latest and best of everything -- in a peaceful, safe and comfortable environment," Austin said.

You can reach Staff Writer Carol Benfell at 521-5259 or carol.benfell@pressdemocrat.com