Code Blue: The Other End of the Stethescope by Debra E. Blaine, MD; Warren Publishing; (c) 2019; ISBN 9781733-795579; 380 pages; $15.95.
SAN DIEGO –Dr. Tobi Lister works at an urgent care mill, where doctors are not supposed to spend more than 10 minutes with each patient — less if possible — and are graded by how many “likes” they get on Yelp-like medical reviews sent in by patients. The problem is that if they don’t spend sufficient time with their patients, the doctors are liable to get dinged; but if they do, wait times increase for other patients, resulting in even more dings.
Tobi shares her frustration with her colleagues about a medical practice — owned by a hedge fund, rather than by doctors — that puts profits well ahead of patients’ wellbeing. While we readers sympathize, we soon become alerted to the fact that the medical profession faces far greater dangers than that: the sharing of patient information with criminal elements, who use what should be confidential notes for the purposes of blackmail, extortion, and if necessary, murder.
What Dr. Lister doesn’t know is that her own life is in danger, not only because the manager of her clinic–and his superiors–may be corrupt, but also because her brother, whom she assumed had been long dead, is suspected of trying from afar to expose the corrupt practices in the medical profession. Russian assassins want him, and anyone with whom he might have shared his concerns–dead, very dead.
Into the plot enters a man to whom Dr. Lister once almost had been engaged, before he mysteriously broke off their relationship and then disappeared.
I’ll not tell you how the suspense novel turns out, but one of its most hair-raising episodes occurs in the parking lot of Dr. Lister’s synagogue, which she attends faithfully on Friday nights.
This novel will keep you in suspense to its conclusion, all the while raising doubts in your mind about how well the doctors of your health care system are really taking care of you, and whether the politicians in Washington have reasons not to pay sufficient attention.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com