Healing Reads: The Year's Five Best Books
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*County: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital* /
by David A. Ansell/
[INFORMED]F. Martin Ramin for The Wall Street Journal
'Patients with toothaches, loose teeth, oral tumors and mouth abscesses
lined up in painful silence during the dark hours of the early morning…
some in wheelchairs, others with canes and crutches raced to get to the
Oral Surgery clinic to win one of the 50 prized slots that guaranteed a
dentist would see them.'
From his start three decades ago as a resident at one of America's
oldest and most battle-scarred public hospitals, the author daily
confronted the issue that plagues the nation's health care to this day:
how to deliver quality medical services regardless of race and income.
One of a group of idealistic young doctors in the 1970s, he worked in an
antiquated, dirty facility that was the first to serve blacks and
immigrants—but was infested with rats and cockroaches and still treated
patients in open wards with no air conditioning.
"We were practicing Third World Medicine in Chicago…I shudder to think
how many patients I may have harmed or killed because we could not
diagnose or treat them quickly enough." But the doctor is inspired to
carry on by the dignity, strength and resolve of the patients who come
from violent and crime plagued neighborhoods.
The hospital is often a pawn in Chicago politics, as the staff fights
the dumping of patients from other hospitals who refuse to treat the
uninsured, and provides care on the front lines of the early AIDS
epidemic. There are some triumphs, like a new breast-cancer screening
program. But Dr. Ansell, now chief medical officer at Rush University
Medical Center, warns that efforts to achieve health equity still have a
long way to go.
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