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3:11 p.m. - 2018-10-11
NEW AMSTERDAM (2018)
As someone who has worked in a hospital, I watched the new medical series "New Amsterdam" with a mixture of amusement and disbelief. It's less a medical drama than a bizarre comedy-fantasy in a totally fanciful hospital setting.

Ryan Eggold plays Dr Floyd Reynolds, the new medical director at a public hospital. TV medical shows have a long history of likable nonconformist doctors (Hawkeye Pierce, Trapper John, MD, and Dr Gregory House), but Reynolds is a top-down rebel, determined to break down the medical establishment from within in order to provide better patient care. But he goes about it in a manner that owes more to blue sky wishful thinking and outright fantasy than anything remotely feasible.

Early in the pilot episode Reynolds walks into a staff meeting and fires the entire cardiac surgery department, because they just charge too darn much money. I hope there weren't any patients coming through ER that day that needed heart surgery. Then he tells the assembly that he will immediately hire fifty more attending physicians . . . with money that has just been lying around the hospital budget unused, I suppose. And he's not going to let department heads depend on medical residents any more. So where will those erstwhile residents go for their training?

Later one of the department managers who has avoided being fired by the new sheriff in town informs him that there is one cardiac surgeon who is actually OK. (She wants to sleep with this OK surgeon, and we have already seen them having a public discussion of their relationship in the halls of the hospital, but hey.) Reynolds looks the guy up and offers him the chairmanship of the cardiac surgery department. When reminded that there is no cardiac surgery department any more, Reynolds says, "Build one!". So the new chief medical officer is a sort of super delegator, not unlike the guy in the Home Advisor commercial who tells his friend to get a bunch of quotes and set up an appointment.

Reynolds's tag line is "How can I help?" The ER manager's answer to that question is that she would like to get rid of the ER waiting room. It would be so much nicer if ER patients could go straight to a bed. Try that during the flu season. And don't forget that New Amsterdam is a public hospital, where in all likelihood uninsured patients come with what often prove to be minor complaints.

Later we get a look at the ER and it's obvious that they have no triage process; patients are told to wait until their name is called. A guy who might have ebola has to collapse before anyone will take a look at him.

Another doctor wants healthy food in the hospital. In subsequent scenes we see this same guy eating (1) doughnuts and (2) a candy bar. So obviously he wants healthy food for other people, not himself.

To both of the above requests Reynolds says Done! I think everything the doctors are asking for would require major budgetary changes and would probably have to be signed off on by the hospital board. A chief medical officer is not a CEO, and he doesn't have magical powers, unless he's Dr Strange.

Finally, I couldn't help noticing that this TV series that claims to be about taking on the medical establishment was sponsored in part by direct to consumer pharmaceutical ads.

 

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