| ||
| Vol. 24, No. 9 |
| May 15, 2002 |
|
New Medical TV Series Goes "Prime Time" by JONATHAN LOWE Memorial Hermann Healthcare System Memorial Hermann Hospital staff and doctors from The University of Texas Medical School at Houston will make house calls this summer, entering the homes of millions of television viewers.After visiting several prestigiousmedical institutions across the country last year, ABC Television selected the staff and patients at Memorial Hermann as the cast for the network’s newest prime-time project. "Houston Medical," a reality series on ABC, will bring viewing audiences an unprecedented look at the real-life drama that unfolds every day in the Texas Medical Center. The series will debut Tuesday, June 18 at 9 p.m. CST, on KTRK Channel 13. A New Concept "Houston Medical" builds on the success of "Hopkins 24/7," a documentary series taped at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Medical Center for ABC News. The series, which aired in late summer 2000, depicted the day-to-day workings of the academic medical institution in six, self-contained episodes. ABC executives decided to expand the idea, charging its entertainment division with the task of pairing producers who had experience building trust in academic medical settings with a hospital willing to reveal the daily emotional struggles encountered by its staff. Andrea Wong, senior vice president of alternative series and specials at ABC, turned to New Screen Concepts, an independent production company based in Connecticut and Los Angeles. "We needed storytellers whose specialty was conveying personal triumphs and tragedies with compassion," she says. "New Screen Concepts has a reputation for producing compelling medical television specials that respect the dignity of all involved." New Screen Concepts executive producers Lou Gorfain and Chuck Bangert understood that ABC wasn’t looking to capture the gory intensity already featured in many cable television shows. Last spring, they visited top hospitals around the country, including academic medical centers in Chicago, Miami, North Carolina and San Francisco. "A lot of medical documentaries are based in the emergency department and tend to be ‘blood and guts’ kind of shows," Gorfain says. "Although about one quarter of our stories originate in the emergency department, this show’s focus is not trauma. In scouting locations, we searched for a hospital that could provide us with a rich base for a variety of stories." New Screen Concepts had previously worked with Dr. James "Red" Duke, trauma surgeon and founder of Memorial Hermann Life Flight, for the Emmy award winning medical series "Lifeline" in 1979 and later for the ABC pilot "Code One" in 1985. "We had already had two extremely positive experiences at Memorial Hermann Hospital and felt we had an ally with Dr. Duke," Gorfain says. Making the Cut After visiting Memorial Hermann Hospital last March, Gorfain and Bangert were pleasantly surprised by Houston’s ethnic diversity, by the city’s mix of country and cosmopolitan life and by the bright, modern appearance of Memorial Hermann Hospital. "Memorial Hermann Hospital has a look that says ‘hospital’ but also says ‘clean and state-of-the art,’" Bangert says. "We also expected everyone to speak with a twang, but instead we’ve seen that this hospital draws the best of the best from all over the world." After numerous meetings, Dr. Steve Allen, Memorial Hermann Hospital’s medical director, and James Eastham, Memorial Hermann Hospital’s CEO, agreed to grant New Screen Concepts unlimited and unsupervised access to all areas of the hospital. "We appreciated the openness of the medical staff and administration to our cameras," Gorfain says. Rolling Tape Gorfain and Bangert called in producers and camera crews to film for four weeks last spring, resulting in a 20-minute pilot. Top ABC executives liked it enough to order the crew to proceed with production of six, one-hour episodes for prime-time broadcast. Crews returned last July – just in time to chronicle the reopening of Memorial Hermann Hospital and Memorial Hermann Children’s Hospital after Tropical Storm Allison halted operations at both facilities for 38 days. By September, more than 30 New Screen Concepts employees and local freelancers were rotating through the hospital in around-the-clock shifts. Three four-person crews – comprised of a camera operator, sound technician, producer and production assistant - began documentation. Producer Janis Biewend says crews know no such thing as a typical shooting day. "Our plans can go out the window at a moment’s notice – just as they do with doctors and patients," she says. "We go where the stories take us, which makes for some long days and weekends." Bangert says story production is like working a combination lock. "First, we need an interesting doctor," he says. "Not necessarily the most skilled, but someone who is accessible, at ease in front of the camera and who radiates passion about caring for his or her patients. Next, we need an interesting patient, someone an audience can root for and care about, with whom they can identify. Finally, we need to follow that patient’s unique or dramatic case from the beginning, follow it as the story of the patient’s treatment builds and develops and be there to show its conclusion." A Respectful Approach Biewend says she’s constantly surprised how families have opened up to film crews during the most difficult times of their lives. Mary Sharkey, a 50-year-old Houston housewife and mother of three who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last December, says the crews’ display of genuine interest put her at ease to share about her disease and treatment publicly on camera. "I wouldn’t have been as open discussing my illness if they had seemed detached, but they were so concerned and caring about me and my family – for a short while they became a part of our family," she says. "They did rearrange my furniture and they sometimes took up a good chunk of our day, but did it in a way that wasn’t annoying or intrusive. They placed value on us and not on what they were doing." "My 17-year-old daughter made the cheerleading team while they followed us, and by their excitement, you would have thought their own children made the team," Sharkey continues. "We appreciated their interest in family life, because we want other families to realize that being diagnosed with cancer doesn’t mean life as you know it is over." Uncharted TV Territory Bangert says that since the series is not scripted, the dramatic structure of each show is unclear until crews have several complete stories filmed. "Not every story pans out, so we have to shoot more footage than the average documentary," he says. "Our shooting ratio is extremely high, about 100 minutes filmed for every minute that ends up broadcast." Just when they think they’ve gotten the best story they could get, Producer Tracey Washington-Bagley says the stories get better. "What I thought was awesome three or four months ago continually gets replaced by what we continue to document," she says. Washington-Bagley says examples of awesome story lines include motivated employees who are well received by family members, and when patients are able to wake up, get up, thank the staff and go home. Bangert laments that many stories they’ve followed will not make the series debut. "It’s difficult to see a story knocked out of our lineup by something even more dramatic and powerful, knowing how much time and effort some doctors and patients put into cooperating with us," he says. "It’s our hope that we can tell these stories in later episodes." "To bill Houston Medical as a reality show doesn’t do it justice," Bangert says. "The reality television world runs the gamut from game shows to nature documentaries, but there’s nothing out there quite like this – it’s unique. What we have captured with Houston Medical is a real cross-section of life." Prime Time Profiles Dr. Terri Major-Kincade From a young age, Dr. Terri Major-Kincade learned from her parents that education was the key to her success. "They taught me that the color of your skin doesn’t matter. It’s what’s in your head and what’s in your heart," says Dr. Major-Kincade, a UT-Houston neonatologist, wife and mother of two. "I don’t think of myself as an African-American physician. I just see myself as a physician – a good physician." Dr. Michael Kent When Dr. Michael Kent was finishing up medical school at UT-Houston and trying to choose a specialty, he became attracted to orthopedics. But orthopedics was a highly coveted spot, and Dr. Kent had an undistinguished medical school record. "I really like the orthopedics faculty here – they are athletes, hard workers, energetic – kind of the ‘blue-collar’ guys of the medical field," he says. "That appealed to me. Plus, in orthopedics, you get to use all of these cool tools on people – hammers and drills and all sorts of things. But I didn’t think there was a chance in the world I’d get in here. I didn’t think I was smart enough." Now the chief orthopedics resident, Dr. Kent gets to use those "cool tools" every day, mending shattered bones. Dr. James "Red" Duke In addition to collecting footage of doctors’ day-to-day routines at Memorial Hermann Hospital, "Houston Medical" film crews followed most physicians outside of their work environment to catch a glimpse of their personal lives. With legendary Texas trauma surgeon Dr. Red Duke, they had to take a different tack - his life is his work. Rarely is he seen outside the hospital or the UT-Houston Medical School, his stomping ground since 1972. "I try to be an honest, straightforward, hard-working guy," Dr. Duke says. "When I have a job to do, I just do it. I have an ability to exclude everything else around me. Whatever I’m focused on, I’m focused on, and there’s no distracting me. I think that’s what a surgeon ought to do." Dr. Crystal Cassidy Dr. Crystal Cassidy knew that a career managing real estate property wasn’t going to be enough for her. But where could she find a career that combined her love of science with her need for adrenaline? Dr. Cassidy found the job she was looking for in the Memorial Hermann Hospital emergency room. As an ER doctor, she deals with a constant stream of patients experiencing a wide variety of injuries and illnesses. "I like that there is a lot going on at once," Dr. Cassidy explains. "It suits my personality and temperament." Dr. Cassidy is concerned about how people will react to seeing the antics of the emergency room personnel on television. "Laughing and joking at work is our coping mechanism – we do it to deal with the huge amount of stress we are under. But when the cameras were there, I found myself worrying that people would see us carrying on and think that we were callous or unfeeling," she says. "People need to understand that when emergency room personnel behave in ways that may seem unprofessional, it’s just because if they didn’t have that outlet, they would fall apart." Dr. Mark Henry A Denver native, Dr. Henry is a partner at the Houston Hand & Upper Extremity Center, specializing in complicated limb reconstruction, microsurgery and wrist surgery for Memorial Hermann Hospital. "I chose the specialty because of the unappreciated importance that hands play in our lives, and for the tremendous challenge of attempting to repair them properly," he says. Dr. Henry and his wife, Maribel, allowed the cameras to capture their personal lives, chronicling their desire to become parents. Dr. Marnie Rose By Dr. Marnie Rose’s own account, she’s a bit of a medical mystery. At age 28, she is undergoing her third round of treatment to fight a rare brain cancer that usually only affects men who are twice her age. As mysterious as her illness is, Dr. Rose, a second-year pediatrics resident at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, keeps no secrets about her prognosis on the "Houston Medical" series. She removed her wig and welcomed photographers to see her through surgery, chemotherapy, patient rounds and interactions with her family and friends. "To me, this has been a healthy experience," Dr. Rose said. "I’ve been able to open up to the cameras and talk about things I wouldn’t want to discuss with my family and friends because it would upset them." – Meredith Raine-Middleton and Shannon Rasp, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
©2006 Texas Medical Center E-Mail: tmcinfo@texmedctr.tmc.edu URL: http://www.tmc.edu/tmcnews/05_15_02/page_01.html |