Part 1 is a personal story by the producer about his bicycle accident in Germany.. Parts 2-4 are interviews with R.N. Mulhern and M.D. Tuggy, veterans of the frontlines of American healthcare.
Produced by Tom Allen
In Part 1 the author recounts how a bicycle trip through Europe ends with a crash near Berlin, in what was East Germany. A broken hip, surgery and a 50/50 chance of recovery are the result. After 9 days in a hospital where the nurses speak German, Russian and Polish, the producer returned home to another day in a Seattle hosptial. The contrasts are dramatic. The German surgeons are first rate, the nurses well organized and attentive and technology absent.
Parts 2-4 are a serialized interview with Dr. Tuggy, Director of resident training at Seattle's Swedish Medical Center and with RN Patty Mulhern director for 27 yrs of nursing for Home Health Services of the Pacific Northwest. Their comments on American health care have suprisingly little relation to the issues we see on television and mainstream news. For Tuggy and Mulhern the solutions have little to do with insurance but more about how the health industry is structured.