FREMONT, Calif. — A California family is devastated that their relative was told he didn’t have long to live by a doctor appearing on a robot’s video screen.

San Francisco Bay Area news station KTVU reported Thursday that 79-year-old Ernest Quintana went Sunday to Kaiser Permanente Medical Center’s emergency department in Fremont.

Granddaughter Annalisia Wilharm was with Quintana in intensive care when a nurse said a doctor would be making his rounds. She says a robot arrived in the room and the doctor appeared on a video screen.

Wilharm says she was stunned to hear by video that her grandfather’s lungs were failing and he didn’t have long to live.

Michelle Gaskill-Hames, senior vice president for Kaiser Permanente in southern Alameda County, says in a statement that this was a “highly unusual circumstance.”

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