Robots shorten patient stays

Recovering surgery patients whose doctors used robots for bedside visits were released from the hospital earlier than patients who received only traditional visits, a new study shows.

Sinai Hospital of Baltimore reviewed charts of 376 patients who had laparoscopic gastric bypass for morbid obesity from January 2004 to July 2006. Of those patients, 284 received postoperative visits from a surgeon. The other 92 were assessed by the surgeon's bedside visits and robot rounds that allowed the doctor to see and interact with patients from afar through cameras and microphones on the device.

Researchers found that 77% of patients who had the robot rounds were discharged from the hospital the day after surgery. The study said 77% of patients who had only doctor bedside visits were discharged the second postoperative day.

The mean length of stay was 1.26 days for the group assessed with robotic telerounding compared with 2.33 days for patients with only physician bedside visits, according to the study in the July Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

"It drops a whole day off. It's a benefit for health care. It's a benefit for the patient," said lead study author Alex Gandsas, MD, head of bariatric and minimally invasive surgery at Sinai Hospital.

The hospital had a financial gain of about $220,000 through the early discharges, freeing up beds for new patients, the study said.

"We're trying to create more empty beds so more patients can be accommodated," Dr. Gandsas said.

Sinai is among a growing number of hospitals using robots to hook up physicians to patients. With a joystick and computer connection, physicians log on to a robot that displays the doctor's face on a screen and rolls into a hospital room to check on patients.

More than 100 robots are being used at about 60 hospitals nationwide, said InTouch Health, a Santa Barbara, Calif., company that makes the robots.

The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in 2003 began trying a robot on rounds, enabling a physician to visit patients and answer questions while away from the hospital. A 2004 study of 30 patient visits found that half of patients preferred seeing their own physician by robot rather than a different doctor.

Dr. Gandsas also has used the machine to mentor surgeons in Argentina after sending software that let them connect computers to Sinai's robot and watch procedures from its screen. He also helps fellow surgeons in the operating room by robot when he can't be there in person.