COLUMBIA FALLS, Mont., April 12, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- Heartland for Profit (now available through AuthorHouse) is a gripping novel that illustrates the trend toward a business driven health care industry. Author P. David Myerowitz, M.D., utilizes his medical expertise to create a thrilling and realistic novel about a heart surgeon who discovers that an insatiable HMO is behind a recent rash of operating room deaths.
Dr. Phil Gold left his Chicago home a year ago to become the chief of cardiac surgery at Southern Ohio University. Suddenly, patients begin mysteriously dying. The hospital chief executive officer, Carlton Ashley, and the chief of cardiology, Roger Shaw, blame Phil. Phil knows something is wrong, so he and his chief resident, the talented but cocky Charles Campbell, try to uncover the real reason patients are losing their lives.
During this bizarre time at the hospital, Phil is also dealing with his wife, Elizabeth, a health care lawyer who still lives in Chicago. She's questioning the practicality of living apart from her husband. Laura Martin, a beautiful new staff cardiologist, is devising her own plan to solve Phil's personal and professional dilemmas.
As Phil and Charles race to stop the increasing number of deaths, their search leads them more toward threats and violence than answers. They butt heads with John Sinclair, the chief executive officer of a rapidly expanding healthcare conglomerate. Patients are being used as pawns in an insidious scheme to maximize profits, and their only protection against this callous plan are two goodhearted doctors who try to stop their beloved profession from turning into a corporate game.
Myerowitz spent 20 years in the academic practice of cardiac surgery, including 12 years at Ohio State University. He was a professor, chief of cardiothoracic surgery, director and founder of Ohio State University Heart Transplant Program and director of the resident training program in cardiothoracic surgery. He has more than 100 scientific articles and books to his credit, including the first North American book on heart transplantation. In Heartland for Profit, he describes some of the dilemmas he faced while he was a surgeon. He left a profession he loved at age 52 because the medical industry had become a business.
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