Astute, compassionate, and written with tremendous subtlety, Susan Garrett's portrait of a small hospital in Maine offers compelling insight into just how inseparable human interest is from the politics of health care. In the tradition of such masters as Annie Dillard and John McPhee, Garrett uses careful and graceful personal descriptions to shed light on major issues.This hospital is a place where doctors, nurses, and staff know every patient's name, stay overtime to help when a neighbor is admitted, and pitch in during blizzards. They struggle with rising costs, expensive high-tech medicine. Medicare regulations, and other contemporary health-care challenges that threaten to close it down. As Susan Garrett looks at a year in the life of this community hospital and tells its true story, she fills it with history, sharp observations, amusing anecdotes, daily drama, and glimpses into the private lives of medical personnel, trustees, staff, and patients. And her fascinating, wise narrative becomes a microcosm of what's gone wrong, what's stayed right, and what's truly needed in today's medicine.Susan Garrett worked as the administrator of this hospital, located in three red-brick buildings on a hill near the rocky Maine seacoast; her life became inextricably entangled in its daily battles between quality health care and cost. She tells us about: searching for beds for the uninsured and homeless...Dr. James, the hospital's star surgeon and main money-maker, who threatened to leave if the hospital refused his demands for ever more expensive equipment...Carrie, the proud Yankee spinster, who must sell her heirlooms to pay for outrageously costly heart medicine...a summer of chaos in the emergency room...keeping the peace between a tap-dancing family doctor, who would walk through fire for his patients, and a new physician on staff...and the mystery of the shy anesthesiologist who vanishes during a snowstorm.A wonderful blend of heartwarming stories, high drama, and sensible, well-informed discussion on the American health crisis, Taking Care of Our Own illuminates the complex needs, claims, and goals of everyone involved in contemporary health care with great lucidity and humanity. It is a mind-changing, idea-generating book that offers workable solutions and a compassionate perspective that caring citizens and enlightened lawmakers need, now more than ever, to hear. Read Less