County: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital

Ansell's dramatic account of the 17 years he spent at Chicago's 160-year-old public Cook County Hospital (now John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital), rising from intern to chief of the General Internal Medicine and Primary Care Division, presents chilling proof of the indignities, interminable lines, inexcusable delays, inferior facilities, and incomplete care received by uninsured, mostly African-American patients. At County ("a petri dish for vermin"), where clerks ruled the mostly open wards and unsupervised interns learned by trial and error on a "battlefield of medicine," he and his colleagues fought against party politics for funds to keep County open and establish pioneering services (e.g., breast cancer screening, HIV/AIDs care). With the nation's focus on a national health-care policy providing quality medical services to citizens regardless of race, ethnicity, and income level, Ansell's expos%C3%A9 will shock and motivate readers to take a stand on the issue. (July)