![]() Shot over a two-month period in 2010, the film uses intimate access and a cinema verité approach to show a “composite day in the life” at Highland Hospital. These stories are juxtaposed with the struggle that doctors and nurses face everyday-managing a limited number of beds and supplies while providing prompt care. The tension between trauma and acute care builds in the waiting room at Highland Hospital, resulting in long, frustrating periods-sometimes as long as twelve hours-spent waiting for basic medical attention.ĬJ, a nurse at Highland Hospital, in a production still from the upcoming film, “The Waiting Room.”įocusing on a handful of characters-a young girl with a serious bout of strep throat, a carpet layer suffering from painful bone spurs, a man brought in after overdosing on a number of drugs, an uninsured patient turned away from Kaiser on the day of his scheduled surgery to remove a testicular tumor-the film traces the entire course of waiting for, and receiving care, at Highland. ![]() Doctors and nurses juggle 236 beds-balancing limited resources in a delicate triage system to provide care to a community desperately in need. The emergency room sees about 80,000 visits annually. Almost every adult in the area who suffers a traumatic injury is transported to Highland Hospital, whether or not they are insured. The hospital is the source of primary care for some 250,000 patients. ![]() Highland Hospital, located in East Oakland at 31 st Street and 14 thAvenue, is a county-run, public hospital that serves as the major trauma center for the greater Oakland area, as well as providing the bulk of non-emergency medical care to uninsured patients in Alameda County. The film follows a group of patients and doctors as they struggle through the realities of the public health care system-lack of insurance, the high cost of care, a shortage of beds, and extremely long wait times. The Waiting Room is an upcoming feature-length documentary film shot entirely at Oakland’s Highland Hospital.
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