Painful Hospital Drama

“Hopkins 24/7” sounds interesting and intelligent (“Are These Heroes of Health Care Universal?,” by Howard Rosenberg, Aug. 30). However, I will not be viewing it.

My husband died recently in a local suburban hospital. He was returning home on a bike trail from Seal Beach to our home in Whittier. He blacked out and was taken by paramedics to the nearest hospital. From that first moment in the hospital, he was treated as if a fall from a bike was no big deal. His clavicle and pelvis bone were broken. An autopsy would latter reveal that seven ribs were also broken. Yet the so-called ER did not deem it “important” to order an MRI scan. He suffered a massive brain hemorrhage several hours later and died three days later.

My heartbreak is too fresh to watch a series on a hospital that seemingly is top-notch. Rosenberg asked a weighty question: Are the role-model doctors on the screen remotely typical of the masses that practice medicine at U.S. hospitals? If only my husband had been fortunate enough to have been taken by paramedics to a top-notch facility. They are far and few for those of us living in the suburbs.

PHYLLIS MAURICE

Whittier

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In my interview with Susan King regarding “Hopkins 24/7,” the ABC News series I co-produced (TV Times, Aug. 27), I am quoted as saying that “unlike a private institution where the money is, the money ain’t here at Hopkins.”

I’m fully aware, of course, that Johns Hopkins is indeed a private institution, and in fact they have a large endowment and cannot be described as strapped for cash. I’m not blaming King for misquoting me--it’s certainly possible I misspoke and meant to say “other private institutions.”

In any case, the point I was trying to make was that the staff at Hopkins are some of the very best doctors in the world, but that they take considerable cuts in salary for the privilege of working in an atmosphere that produces some of the best cutting-edge research as well as peerless patient care--while they simultaneously shoulder the burden of training the next generation of doctors.

Several of the doctors there told me they could make twice as much elsewhere, but would have a hard time leaving a culture--and Hopkins is truly a culture unto itself--where there is such a stimulating atmosphere of intellectual exchange and collaboration.

PETER L. BULL

New York