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Book Review
Canada and the United States
Sandra Opdycke. No One Was Turned Away: The Role of Public Hospitals in New York City since 1900. New York: Oxford University Press. 1999. Pp. x, 244. $29.95.
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For more than two centuries, public hospitals have served as New York's safety net. Sandra Opdycke argues convincingly that the history of these vital public institutions is especially important now as the city is debating whether and in what form the public hospital system should be maintained. She focuses primarily on Bellevue Hospital, one of the largest public hospitals and one of the oldest, tracing its lineage to the establishment of the New York Almshouse Infirmary, founded in 1736. For revealing contrast, the author selects a leading voluntary hospital of comparable size, New York Hospital, founded in 1791. Incorporating the perspectives of the trustees, the patients, and the medical and nursing staffs of Bellevue and New York Hospitals, her analysis is set against the backdrop of municipal politics, national and local economic conditions, demographic shifts, health insurance plans, unionization, and changing medical practice. |
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