Emergency Room

The subject of The Shadow Saver is an emergency-room physician, but don't go to the Independent Eye production expecting to see scene after dramatic scene of urgent activity as doctors and nurses work intently on wounded and injured patients. In other words, this is not the television show ER transferred to the stage. Oh, there will be a man, or rather a puppet, with a screwdriver stuck in his chest, but that will be the exception. According to Conrad Bishop, co- writer of The Shadow Saver, "there is not a lot of instantaneous high drama" in the piece.

Henry English, a young boy who had just stepped on a nail, got out of his aunt's station wagon and started to limp toward the emergency entrance at Giuffre Medical Center. "I hope you're not bringing him over here," a security guard called to Henry's aunt, Joyce English, who had rushed the boy from the family's home on Perth Street near Broad. "The emergency room's closed. " "But this is the closest emergency room," Joyce English protested. "Take him to St. Joe's," the security guard said.

With many doctors' offices closed in New Jersey this week to protest soaring liability-insurance bills, hundreds of sick people have flocked to hospital emergency rooms for routine care. Will patients, who were turned away by their own physicians, end up shelling out more money for medical insurance co-payments because they sought treatment in an emergency room and not a physician's office? Probably, yes. Patients may not get the co-payment bill due for their emergency room visit for a few weeks, but the co-pay for a hospital emergency room visit typically runs more than a doctor's office visit - $10 to $40 more, depending on the health insurer and the health plan.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health yesterday permitted the James C. Giuffre Medical Center to reopen its emergency room, effectively ending a 15- day-old ban on patient admissions at the hospital. The state, however, continued to restrict the number of medical/surgical patients at the North Philadelphia hospital to 80. The facility, at Eighth Street and Girard Avenue, has the capacity for 148 medical/surgical patients. Bruce Reimer, a Health Department spokesman, said the emergency room was allowed to reopen "because our staff is pleased with the continuing progress made at the facility over the past week.

A Harrisburg-based health insurance company - HealthAmerica and HealthAssurance Pennsylvania Inc. - has reached an agreement with the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office over complaints that it improperly rejected emergency-room treatment claims from more than 600 subscribers across the state, the Attorney General's Office said yesterday. HealthAmerica agreed to reprocess and pay $445,981 in claims. Most of that money will go to hospitals and doctors whose bills were rejected, said Nils Frederiksen, deputy press secretary for Attorney General Tom Corbett.

It wasn't quite a train wreck, but it was still a world of trouble. The emergency room at Episcopal Hospital in Kensington was about to get flooded with victims of bad heroin, and Becki Stuhlemmer knew it. And she knew she had to move fast. They needed more doctors. More nurses. More security, more hospital beds, more supplies. More everything. Stuhlemmer, Episcopal's admistrative director of emergency services, started calling other departments, mobilizing people throughout the hospital.

A financially troubled hospital group plans to consolidate some medical services and eliminate others in an effort to save millions in annual expenses. North Philadelphia Health System will shift all of its emergency-room and acute-care services to St. Joseph's Hospital at 16th and Girard. It will consolidate its growing substance-abuse and psychiatric programs at Girard Medical Center at Eighth and Girard, according to a plan released yesterday. The system employs about 1,300 people.

The James C. Giuffre Medical Center in North Philadelphia remains closed to new admissions today, but the hospital's president says he is confident he can gain state approval for normal operations next week. However, state health officials, who ordered the hospital to stop admitting new patients on Thursday, say it remains unclear how long the hospital will be closed. Portions of the facility could be reopened if inspectors determine the hospital has remedied problems in those sections, said Andrew Major, director of the state health department's bureau of quality assurance.

It's an oft-repeated scene. An ambulance arrives at a hospital emergency room carrying the victim of a traffic accident. The woman is unconscious and in need of immediate surgery for head injuries, and the staff quickly swings into action. But not much is said to the couple sitting anxiously in a corner of the waiting room. They are the parents of the victim, and they arrived 20 minutes after their child was brought in. In the bustle, they are overlooked by a medical staff busy with the task at hand.

Any day now, a bleeding, severely injured patient will be whisked into Lehigh Valley Hospital and enter not only the emergency room, but medical-research history. Unconscious and close to death, the patient will receive an experimental blood substitute that doctors hope will save many lives. Scientists have been trying for decades to develop artificial blood, until recently with little success. Now, Lehigh Valley has been chosen as the first hospital in the nation to administer such a product to a trauma patient - without the patient's consent.

Police are investigating two shootings in Camden that left one man dead and another wounded. The fatal shooting occurred about 4:10 p.m. Thursday on the 1600 block of Pulaski Street in the city's Liberty Park section. There police found Gary Boggs, 19, with multiple gunshot wounds. The Camden resident was taken to Cooper University Hospital, where he died a short time later. No word yet on a possible motive. At 1:40 a.m. Friday, a 27-year-old Camden man walked into Cooper's emergency room with a gunshot wound to the leg. He told police he was driving in the area of Broadway and Berkley Street in the Lanning Square section, a few blocks from the hospital, when he heard gunfire and was hit. Officials said his wound was not life threatening.

A shout-out from Dick Clark In 1956, I was a teenager on a date with my boyfriend, when my life suddenly changed. As we were driving down Broad Street, I was complaining about a Spanish test I had to take the next day. Seconds later, I was slammed against the windshield and thrown to the driver's side. A trolley car had blown through a red light and broadsided our car on the passenger side. My body was twisted and bent, and I remember a funny taste in my mouth and shivers.

An off-duty Philadelphia police officer was hurt apparently trying to help someone during a fight outside a popular Northeast bar, and four other on-duty officers were injured breaking up a separate bar room brawl in Southwest Philadelphia. None of the injuries appeared to be serious. In the first incident, Northeast Detectives say an off-duty officer who worked in the 25th District was injured while outside Benny the Bum's on the 9000 block of Bustleton Avenue after the bar closed at 2 a.m. Police said they were not yet clear how the officer became involved in the altercation, but it's possible he was attempting to help another patron.

THE BUCKS COUNTY mother was perplexed. Her 14-year-old son was visibly shaken after spending the night with the Rev. James Brennan in 1996, she said. The boy clung to his mother and refused to sleep alone in his bed. But he wouldn't tell her what happened at the priest's apartment, she said. Brennan, an inspiring priest and friend so close she considered him a brother, was just as evasive when she and her husband pressed him days later for answers, she told a Common Pleas jury Wednesday.

Dr. Joseph L. Hayes, 84, of Springfield, Delaware County, an emergency-room physician, died of complications of pneumonia Friday, April 6, at home. After graduating from Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1961, Dr. Hayes completed an internship at Cherry Hill Hospital. He then had a general medicine practice in Havertown. In 1969, he became an emergency-room physician at Tri-County Hospital, now Springfield Hospital. Dr. Hayes helped train many students, interns, and residents, his children said.

Less than a year after more than 300 residents of Northgate II, a large subsidized-housing high-rise in North Camden, were given an on-site health-care clinic, their neighbors have been promised access to the same medical staff. Local health-care officials and community leaders met with residents of Northgate I on Thursday and vowed to provide them preventive services and coordinate their hospital aftercare. The first step, authorities said, would be to give residents access to the Reliance Medical Group clinic across the street at Northgate II. Since its summer opening, the facility - which is open Monday through Friday and has a physician who treats patients two days a week - has only seen about 100 residents.

At 2:38 a.m. on Nov. 15, Kevin Neary found himself sprawled on the sidewalk of Bodine Street near the pretty brick rowhouse where he rented an apartment. He couldn't feel his arms or legs. He tried calling, "Help," three times, but with each attempt, as though in a nightmare, his voice grew weaker. Why could no one hear him? Minutes passed. Neary opened his eyes to see a police officer kneeling beside him. "Don't let me die," he pleaded. Over the next few weeks, he sometimes wondered whether he'd have been better off dead.

Study: 'Chemo brain' may not go away for cancer patients Chemotherapy patients have long complained of the mental fog that tends to accompany treatment. Now, a new study suggests that certain combinations of chemo drugs may have long-term effects on cognition. Researchers looked at 196 women who had been treated for early-stage breast cancer with a three-drug chemotherapy regimen. The women underwent cognition testing an average of 21 years after they had received chemo.

At a press conference Friday morning, Chester police announced some good news: They'd solved a homicide from last summer's crime surge, which threw the city into a monthlong state of emergency. But before the day was out, there was a new crisis: Nine teens were shot at a birthday party attended by about 100 kids at Minaret Temple No. 174. The shooting prompted the all-too-familiar accusations and recriminations that plague the riverfront city of 37,000 - even as the local economy shows signs of life.