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By Charlotte Underwood
LAFOLLETTE, TN (WLAF)- General Cardiologist Dr. James Gubitosa from Tennova LaFollette Medical Center guest spoke at Tuesday’s Campbell County Rotary Club luncheon held at the LaFollette United Methodist Church.
Dr. Gubitosa came on board at the medical center here in LaFollette around six months ago in August of 2025. Before coming to Tennessee, Dr. Gubitosa was in Bowling Green, Kentucky, for his Cardiology Fellowship. Before that he completed his residency in New Jersey.
He went over some exciting things happening in the cardiac world at Tennova LaFollette, specifically touching on heart health and some of the new tests that the medical center can utilize for heart tests and how the hospital and its services have been growing.
“We just want to educate the public about what we do up here and the advances and strides that we have made as a hospital. We have made tremendous progress and revived the echo cardiography program, revived the cardiac stress testing program, revived the transesophageal echocardiogram, revived the cardiac monitor program, invigorated the inpatient cardiology consult service and we are also doing invasive procedures in the ICU rather than transferring people out for that and the list keeps growing,” Dr. Gubitosa said.
He showed an echo image using the hospital’s old machine and then showed an echo image using new testing equipment at the hospital. The difference was night and day, with the old image in black and white and hard to read, while the new image was in color and much clearer.
“They have spoiled me, this quality of echo cardiogram is amazing,” Dr. Gubitosa said, adding that this kind of imaging is “particularly good at picking up early defects.”
“You can see with millimeter precision what is going on in the heart, these are all things we do multiple times per week … This is Vanderbilt level stuff that we are doing in LaFollette,” Dr. Gubitosa said.
He said he was excited to see what was next for Tennova Medical.
“We have to look to the future, we have to continue to grow, we keep identifying areas that are shortcomings, figure out how to fix them, how to move forward, because that’s the idea … people in rural counties should not have to go all the way to Knoxville, except in the most extreme of circumstances. If we can provide them with quality care right next door, I think we should pursue that and I cannot wait to see what happens in time,” Dr. Gubitosa said.
Looking to the future, he said that Tennova would soon be integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into the clinic’s medical record procedures.
According to Dr. Gubitosa, AI will be used to type up notes for doctors and enter orders once the program is integrated. He said this will save time for doctors to be able to see more patients.
“By the time you walk out of the room, you don’t have to worry about typing that stuff up, it’s all right there. You of course proofread it and make sure it is accurate because AI is a fledgling technology. I am super excited to give it a try,” Dr. Gubitosa said.
According to Tennova LaFollette Medical Center CEO Mark Cain, that AI program will be coming to the hospital next Monday.
“The cool thing about that particular product, when the physician, nurse practitioner goes back to enter information, they are putting that information into a variety of categories that go to specific place in the records, AI will do that,” Cain explained.
He said the program would save time for medical providers.
“It is an asset technology, without any doubt, fledgling at best, but so far in our testing it has worked,” Cain said.
He said the program would help medical professionals have more time for themselves and their families.
“I think it will enable me to be faster in the clinic as well, I might be able to see more patients, which is what I want to do,” Dr. Gubitosa said. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-02/11/2026-6AM)