COUNTY: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital [Hardcover]

David Ansell M.D. (Author), Quentin Young (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 31, 2011

The Chicago Sun Times, December 26, 2011

 " Must Read Book of 2012: Public Hospital's Sad Tale"

Make it the last book you read in 2011 or your first of 2012 but whatever you do. don't miss out on County:Life, Death and Poilitics at Chicago's Public Hospital... Esther Cepeda

Editorial Reviews

Review

Chicago Tribune, July 20, 2011

 " "County" is a landmark book, brave and angry and indispensable" .... Julia Keller, Cultural Critic

"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 expose will shock and motivate readers to take a stand on the issue-" Publisher's Weekly

"..when it comes to the stories of his patients, many of whom he cared for over decades, from clinic to hospital to funeral, Dr. Ansell soars-" New York Times

"His gift for describing the connections between social forces and medical care, coupled with the vivid patient stories interspersed with trenchant critiques of the politics of health care, make this work stand out-" Library Journal

The Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2011

Laura Landro, Healing Reads (one of) " The Year's Five Best Books"

 "Ansell skillfully humanizes questions of health-care policy by describing real-life scenarios . . . his gift for describing the connections between social forces and medical care, coupled with the vivid patient stories interspersed with trenchant critiques of the politics of health care, makes this work stand out." --- Library Journal

"… when it comes to the stories of his patients, many of whom he cared for over decades, from clinic to hospital to funeral, Dr. Ansell soars. These sketches are, to be sure, the standard-issue material of a good doctor trying to do right by a set of immensely beleaguered fellow citizens. But unlike fairy tales, we cannot have too many of these stories in circulation, to bear witness, to inform and to inspire." -- Abigail Zuger, M.D., The New York Times
 

 
"On one level, Ansell's book is the coming-of-age story of a young, idealistic physician from the East Coast encountering racism and bare-knuckle politics in Chicago as he learns the basics of his demanding profession. With unusual honesty, Ansell, now the chief medical officer at Rush University Medical Center, recounts several medical mistakes that badly injured patients or cost their lives — a result of his inexperience and challenging conditions at the old Cook County Hospital." -- Judith Graham, Chicago Tribune

 

 "…'County' is a landmark book, brave and angry and indispensable, not least because Ansell dares to declare that the health reform legislation passed in 2010 — dubbed 'Obamacare' — was no breakthrough. It 'preserved the caste system of health care in America, one that all but guarantees different health outcomes depending on the patient's health insurance status.' " -- Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune

"Ansell (chief medical officer, Rush Univ. Medical Ctr.) spent his medical residency and much of his early professional career at Cook County Hospital, historically Chicago's public hospital for low-income and uninsured patients. He weaves strands of memoir and policy analysis into a heartfelt account of the hospital's challenges, failures, and successes over three decades, from the Civil Rights Movement to the AIDS crisis, in the process educating and moving the reader to both anger and compassion. His gift for describing the connections between social forces and medical care, coupled with the vivid patient stories interspersed with trenchant critiques of the politics of health care, makes this work stand out.

Verdict: Ansell skillfully humanizes questions of health-care policy by describing real-life scenarios. Those who enjoyed such books as Richard Selzer's Letters to a Young Doctor will find this book an education for both the mind and the heart." -- A.W. Klink, Duke Univ., NC

Book Description

Named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the five best health books of 2011!

County is the amazing tale of one of America’s oldest and most unusual urban public hospitals. From its inception as a “poor house” dispensing free medical care to indigents, Chicago’s Cook County Hospital has been both a renowned teaching hospital and the health care provider of last resort for the city’s uninsured. County covers more than thirty years of its history, beginning in the late 1970s when the author began his internship, to the “final rounds” in 2002, when hundreds of former trainees and personnel, many of whom shared Ansell's vision of resurrecting a hospital in critical condition, gathered to bid the  iconic Victorian hospital building an emotional farewell before it was closed to make way for a new facility.County is about people--from Ansell’s mentors, including the legendary Quentin Young, to the multitude of patients whom he and County’s medical staff labored to diagnose and heal. It is a story about politics; from contentious union strikes, to battles against “patient dumping.” Most importantly, it chronicles the battles for instigating new programs that would help to prevent, rather than just treat, serious illnesses, including the opening of County’s HIV/AIDS clinic (the first in the city), as well as an early-detection breast cancer screening program. Finally, it is about an idealistic young man’s medical education in urban America,     a coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of race, segregation, and poverty.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers; First Edition (US) First Printing edition (May 31, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0897336208
• ISBN-13: 978-0897336208
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #115,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Ansell is a Chicago based physician and health activist. He has been an internal medicine physician since training at Cook County Hospital in the late 1970s where he spent seventeen years holding a number of positions including Chief of General Medicine/Primary Care. After leaving County, he spent ten years as Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital located in one of the poorest communities in Chicago. Now, Chief Medical Officer at Rush University Medical Center,he also sees patients and teaches. Since coming to Chicago to train at Cook County Hospital, Dr.Ansell has dedicated his career to fighting health inequity by building programs to address and eliminate these disparities. His work with others has led to the end of "patient dumping" in the US, one of the first cancer screening programs in the US aimed at addressing the Black:White breast cancer mortality disparity, the creation of the most prominent health disparity research and intervention center in Chicago and the creation of the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Taskforce, a not-for-profit dedicated to the elimination of breast cancer mortality disparity. In his spare time he reads, gardens and exercises. He volunteers as a doctor at a Chicago free clinic and has participated in ongoing medical missions to the Dominican Republic and Haiti. He is married to a doctor and has two children. "County" is his first book.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping, absorbing, vivid memoir and a challenge to us all June 12, 2011

By Cynthia Barnard

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

READ David Ansell's new book, "County"! It is a memoir of his many years at Cook County, full of portraits of patients, staff, and politicians. For Chicagoans, it has a special resonance, as every page is fully of names we know and events we remember. The photo section is priceless and vivid. It is a gripping story - I couldn't put it down - it is very thoughtful, timely, insightful, moving. It asks the great questions about a society's responsibility to its members for decent, competent healthcare, and how best to build a system capable of delivering that care.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read June 5, 2011

By Pam Strauss,

Format:Hardcover

I was fortunate to be able to read a galley copy of County which I have since been enthusiastically recommending to everyone I know. The book is immediately engaging, a true page turner; more than once I was so thoroughly engrossed that I nearly missed my train stop. It is both the inspiring story of an individual physician's professional journey as well as the sad story of the broken health care system in the city of Chicago and the United States. Every chapter provides evidence of Dr. Ansell's unwavering commitment to providing health care for the under-served and to addressing the racial and economic disparity rampant throughout our health care system. Where other activists from the 60s and 70s might be accused of "selling out" Dr. Ansell never loses his deeply authentic concern for the health of the under-served and his tireless energy for doing whatever it takes to fix the problems he sees. Woven throughout the book are the deeply moving personal stories of his patients and his relationships with them; the story of his long relationship with his patient with sickle cell anemia left me with tears rolling down my cheeks. This book is a must read for everyone from health care practitioners, to health care activists, to patients, to all citizens of the United States where unfortunately health care remains a privilege and not a right.

56 of 70 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Ansell Unfairly Depicts County Nurses August 25, 2011

By Anne Klosinski

Format:Hardcover

When I read Dr. David Ansell's book ,County, Life ,Death and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital, I wondered if
the county hospital he studied and worked at for 17 years was the same place I studied and worked at for 40 years.
He accurately describes a facility that was decrepit ,poorly equipped, with no air conditioning in sweltering wards,
overcrowded with the county's poorest and sickest; I never saw the rats and roaches.He repeatedly discredits the
medical and nursing staff , the heart and soul of the hospital .Could he not have presented a more balanced
portrayal of the County Hospital and still have made his case for a single payer health care system?

I graduated from Cook County School of Nursing in 1963. I am President of the Board of Directors of the Alumni
Association of Cook County School of Nursing.I worked at the hospital from 1972-2008, 32 of those years as a
Nurse Practitioner on both surgical and medical services . My duties took me to every ward, clinic,department and
nook and cranny of the complex. I worked along side intelligent, dedicated, caring nurses and doctors, not the lazy,
absentee attendings or the" jaded, uncaring, incompetent" nurses Ansell recalls. He apparently never encountered
any of the dedicated, overworked nurses, who so often clued in cocky,arrogant and "clueless" interns.

I am offended by his general disregard for nurses throughout his book as well as his disparaging remarks about the
senior medical staff. I find it hard to believe that after 17 years Ansell could only single out one Nurse Practitioner in
the clinic who misdiagnosed a patient (describing her as an evil-eyed ,bleached and lacquered blond ) and another
nurse as "packed" into a "too-tight" uniform.Was this necessary? He depicts nurses sleeping on the job and
unresponsive .He leaves his readers with a vision of medical mayhem, patient humiliation and abuse, poor care and
poor outcomes.

Even though faced with the many obstacles Ansell describes, I witnessed excellent care by committed doctors and
nurses that provided Cook County Hospital with thousands of successes and a world wide reputation. Ansell
largely ignores the role nurses played in those successes.(He managed to recall only one patient who admitted he had
"great care" )

Nurses are the backbone in every hospital, routinely working 12-16 hour shifts, taking care of critically ill patients
on understaffed floors. It's a demanding, and often thankless , job. No wonder there is a severe nursing shortage
nationwide.

In spite of the working conditions, I found Cook County Hospital to be a place of profound humanity.In his zeal to
portray the hospital as a medical shop of horrors while promoting his apparent agenda of a single-payer health care
system, Ansell does a great disservice to all the doctors and nurses who serve at this world renowned public hospital
and teaching institution.

Anne Klosinski, RN,CNP