Company leader
Ruel Garcia
Founder and CEO
MedGather
Ruel Garcia, MD, is the founder and chief executive of MedGather, which supplies office-based medical virtual assistants to US practices. He is also a practicing gastroenterologist in San Jose, California.
Growing up in Cebu
Garcia grew up in Cebu City, Philippines, and graduated as valedictorian of Don Bosco School for Boys before he moved to the United States. His mother was an OB-GYN and pediatrician in Cebu with her own practice. She also taught at Velez College and served as its Dean of Medicine.
Training in California
Garcia graduated magna cum laude in biological sciences from the University of California, Irvine. He earned his MD at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, where he also completed his internal medicine residency. He trained in gastroenterology at the University of California, San Francisco.
Gastroenterology in San Jose
Garcia is board certified in gastroenterology and a Fellow of the American College of Gastroenterology. His clinical focus is diseases of the bile ducts and pancreas, including ERCP and endoscopic ultrasound, and he practices at Good Samaritan Hospital San Jose and El Camino Health Mountain View. He has published research on hepatitis B and hepatitis C among Asian American patients.
Starting MedGather
Garcia founded MedGather after he ran into staff turnover and compliance risk in his own clinic. He built it around supervised, office-based teams on company devices, which he sees as the difference between compliance on paper and compliance in practice. His guiding idea: "At the heart of excellent patient care is a simple principle: patients deserve timely, personal responses from a dedicated healthcare team."