Closed Shop in Denver

Rumor: three well-to-do Denver citizens have recently died for lack of hospital care. Fact: most Denver hospitals are so crowded that they have waiting lists of surgical patients. Yet the 700-bed municipal Denver General Hospital has 250 empty beds. To City Councilman Edward J. Mapel, the solution to this problem looked simple: open the city hospital to any paying patient.

Councilman Mapel soon discovered that he had a lot to learn about hospitals. To be acceptable to the American Medical Association and the American College of Surgeons, a hospital must have a staff of doctors from accredited medical schools. This staff is carefully selected by the hospital's governing board, and no nonstaff doctor may practice at the hospital.

The City Council did not dare antagonize Denver doctors by forcing the city hospital to relax this rule. Last week Councilman Mapel, Mayor Ben Stapleton and Hospital Superintendent Carl P. Schwalb worked out a suggested compromise, which was no more than a reaffirmation of widespread hospital custom: in emergencies, the hospital would admit patients of nonstaff doctors, but staff doctors must care for them in the hospital.

Growled Councilman Mapel: "Nobody can touch the American Medical Association. . . . Talk about the closed shop of the A.F. of L. and the C.I.O.--they are a bunch of pikers."

In Chicago last week the shoe was on the other foot: the Jackson Park Hospital refused to admit a patient of an A.M.A. doctor who had been a member of the staff for 17 years. The patient, one Toyoko Murayama, though born in the U.S., was of Japanese blood. Explained Superintendent Lucius W. Hilton: "Some of our patients might object to such close bed contact to a Japanese. . . . This is a private hospital and we have absolute power over who we take in."

Raged Dr. Selig A. Shevin, resigning from the Jackson Park staff: "UnAmerican, unpatriotic, inhuman. . . ."

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