The Waiting Room, a feature length documentary
The Waiting Room is a feature length documentary that explores the daily struggle of patients and caregivers as they pass through a public hospital waiting room. It’s like a gut punch to people cast off and left out of our nation’s care system, what some call exceptional and the best in the world.
When Democrats and Republicans vie for your votes and debate healthcare reform, remember these are not the people they are talking about. Most politicians don’t even notice the plight of those at the bottom — this ugly underside. But they, and the billionaire backers who set their agenda, should be made to watch this documentary. After all, these are the 47 percent they often talk about — the people left out of the American Dream. They’re real people.
This film goes behind the doors of Oakland’s Highland Hospital, a safety-net hospital fighting for survival while weathering economic pressures. Stretched to the breaking point, Highland is the primary care facility for 250,000 patients of nearly every nationality, race, and religion. Some 250 patients – most of them uninsured – crowd its emergency room every day.
The film offers a raw, intimate, and often uplifting look at how patients, staff and caregivers cope with disease, bureaucracy, frustration, hope and hard choices during one typically hectic day. It captures in vivid detail what it means for millions of Americans to live without health insurance. Young victims of gun violence take their turn alongside artists and uninsured small business owners, as steel workers, cab drivers and international asylum seekers crowd the halls. (movie trailer follows)
The Waiting Room weaves together several stories from the hundreds being played out daily in the waiting room: a frightened child with a dangerous case of strep throat, a young man with a testicular tumor in desperate need of surgery, as well as those suffering from chronic conditions such as alcohol and drug abuse, heart disease, and diabetes. We also meet the overwhelmed hospital personnel who cope with under-staffing, insufficient beds, and a never-ending stream of ER patients who jump to the head of the line of those sitting in the waiting room. As one doctor says, Highland is “the institution of last resort for so many people.”
In one story, Davelo Lujuan, a hard-working contractor, had been laying rug for almost 30 years but is now losing work and income and is facing foreclosure on his house. He’s struggling to support a daughter and grandchild and has no money in the bank, just $80 in his pocket. He came into the ER for treatment for debilitating back pain that makes it almost impossible to work. Without insurance, he won’t be getting an operation, just pain meds, and he has no real way out.
The Waiting Room lays bare the struggle and determination of both a community and an institution functioning with limited resources and no road map for navigating a health care landscape marked by historic economic and political dysfunction. Through this story of one hospital and the community it serves, the film illustrates the common vulnerability to illness that binds us together as humans. But in a nation such as ours, it seems criminal that safety nets like these are facing budget cuts every year.
Be sure to check out my related article on Why American Healthcare is So Expensive.
The Waiting Room Theatrical Trailer and Highlights
The Waiting Room Story Telling Project
The film’s experience extends beyond the screen. The Waiting Room Storytelling Project is a location-based social media and community engagement initiative that aims to improve the patient experience through the collection and sharing of digital content. This cultural data – video, data visualizations, photographs and text – is collected in frameworks for sharing that range from anonymous expressions of feeling to deeper storytelling.
The primary aim of the platform is to uncover the needs of underserved patients at a moment when the role of the “Safety Net” is being debated both in America and abroad. The project also aims to develop tools for patients that allow them to take a more active role in their health care experience.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wayne Caswell is a retired IBM technologist, futurist, market strategist, consumer advocate, sleep economist, and founding editor of Modern Health Talk. With international leadership experience developing wireless networks, sensors, and smart home technologies, he’s been an advocate for Big Broadband and fiber-to-the-home while also enjoying success lobbying for consumers. Wayne leans left to support progressive policies but considers himself politically independent. (contact & BIO)