No One Was Turned Away

Detailed and well-researched...Should be required reading for urban officials, hospital administrators, and others struggling to provide care for the underserved. -Journal of the American Medical Association The twentieth-century transformation of urban hospitals, from small-size and small-budget institutions to huge complexes with thousands of employees, multiple buildings, and billion-dollar budgets, is a story that few people have understood and that fewer still have studied. Comparing two world-famous medical centers-one public, one private-Sandra Opdycke demonstrates with grace and elegance why a taxpayer-funded municipal system is the best way to meet the health care needs of the nation's neediest citizens. -Kenneth T. Jackson, Columbia University, Editor-in-Chief of The Encyclopedia of New York City Public hospitals have long played an essential, integral role in American society. Visible, responsive to public pressures, and, above all, inclusive, these hospitals are perhaps nowhere so visible as in New York City. They are brilliantly portrayed in Sandra Opdycke's fascinating book, which will be of interest to historians and policy-makers alike. -Joel D. Howell, University of Michigan Sandra Opdycke's book combines urban history, social history, and the history of medicine in exemplary fashion. By comparing two notable hospitals, Bellevue and New York Hospital, she shows readers all that a public system could provide for its citizens. At a time when public hospitals are under attack, her history offers critical guidelines for policy. -David J. Rothman, Columbia University This is a dramatic, impeccably researched, and well-told story of two important American hospitals, Bellevue and New York Hospital, as their sponsors negotiated the hospitals' roles through decades of change. Focusing on the two great traditions of urban hospital care represented in these institutions, one public and one private, this book is a major contribution to the history of American hospitals, urban history in general, and in particular to the social and political history of New York City. -Rosemary Stevens, University of Pennsylvania This book examines hospital development in New York City, and by doing so it serves as a microcosm for understanding hospital development nationwide. -The Unionist It would be hard to read this eloquently written, well-dicumented narrative in all its fascinating detail without recognising the importance of the roles that these hospitals have had in the development of New York City. -Lancet