"[A] remarkable portrait . . . Salamon succeeds in providing a completely unique, three-dimensional and compellingly human perspective of the demanding work — both frustrating and rewarding that is not always apparent to hospital patients and their families."

— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

 

"The fine grain of Ms Salamon's observations allows her to paint a compelling—and damning—portrait of a dysfunctional health-care system… Its careful documentation of financial crises, feuds, personality clashes and, most of all, life-and-death drama it feeds the same appetite for pathos, intrigue, tragedy and redemption…as the current plethora of medical programs."

— Economist

 

"I've never had much interest in hospitals (or been able to sit through an episode of "ER"), but as Salamon expertly sucked me into the saga of Maimonides, I realized this was about more than white coats, scalpels and beeping consoles. This place was 21st century America in a microcosm."

— Laura Miller, Salon (lead review)

From The New York Times, excerpt, May 11, 2o08

'Scrubs' Near the D  Train
by Julie Salamon

A few months into his residency at Maimonides, Dr. Gregorius’s memories of his first foray into the hospital’s emergency room were vague: Stretchers with patients were lined up two and three deep, with the lucky ones semi-secluded behind curtains that barely closed. He noticed that the melting-pot mayhem — Hasidim, Chinese, Pakistanis, Haitians, Russians, Bulgarians — did not seem to include anybody like him, a tall, skinny, curly-haired, dark-eyed, non-Jewish, non-Muslim, non-Asian, non-African, non-Italian white surfer boy.

The visual overload was matched by the audio: Post-Tower of Babel at top volume, accompanied by the constant beeping of monitors, pagers, telephones. The usual E.R. smells but also strange spicy odors he couldn’t place. Had he landed in the third world?

Before he could panic, he came across evidence that he was indeed firmly situated in both the first world and the 21st century: Maimonides had a very cool computer system called Healthmatics ED that, among other things, allowed doctors and nurses to track patients in real time. None of the emergency rooms he had worked in — not Sacramento, not Phoenix and certainly not Nogales, Ariz., a border-town hospital with 10 E.R. beds — had such a sophisticated setup. For Dr. Gregorius, this system made the chaos seem almost comprehensible. The Maimonides emergency department, which processed more than 84,000 patients in Dr. Gregorius’s first year, was not the busiest E.R. in the country or in New York. But it was arguably the most intense.

Using a formula that measured both numbers of patients and the square footage available in which to squeeze them, Steven Davidson, the department chairman, once measured the concentration of humanity in terms of patients per square foot per year. Then he compared the density with other hospitals of comparable size. By this measure, Maimonides was packing in six patients per square foot per year; the average at other hospitals seeing comparable numbers of patients was two or three.

All in all, the setting seemed the perfect fix for the adrenaline junkies who chose emergency medicine as their specialty. But even thrill seekers need a rest, and at Maimonides the flow of need was relentless.

 

Also by Julie Salamon