The business of sickness is perverse. In too many instances, medical interventions are ineffective Band-Aids. Other factors, like where you stand in t

A Single Ohio Hospital Reveals All That’s Wrong With American Health Care

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2021-05-30 19:30:04

The business of sickness is perverse. In too many instances, medical interventions are ineffective Band-Aids. Other factors, like where you stand in the social, racial and economic pecking order — and what ZIP code you were born in — determine far more about your health. As Bertolt Brecht said so well, in his “Worker’s Speech to a Doctor”:

When we’re sick, we hear You are the one who will heal us. When we come to you Our rags are torn off And you tap around our naked bodies. As to the cause of our sickness A glance at our rags would tell you more. It is the same cause that wears out Our bodies and our clothes.

In “The Hospital: Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American Town,” Brian Alexander shares this reality from the perch of a struggling rural hospital, known to its Bryan, Ohio, community as the “Band-Aid Station.” While the nonprofit hospital fights to stay solvent and independent, each day brings new gut-wrenching stories. From the C-suite’s tension-filled strategic planning meetings to life-or-death moments at the bedside, Alexander nimbly and grippingly translates the byzantine world of American health care into a real-life narrative with people you come to care about.

Reporting over a period of two years, which only ended this past August, Alexander went into exam rooms, patients’ homes and pathology labs, and rode along with ambulance crews. He provides a deep investigative account that chronicles the staff of nurses, doctors, technicians and administrators trying to keep the patients of northwest Ohio alive.