Two doctors diagnose patients the old-fashioned way at Mount Sinai in MAKING ROUNDS
MAKING ROUNDS (Muffie Meyer, 2014)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, October 30
212-924-3363
firstrunfeatures.com
www.cinemavillage.com
Over the last several decades, the U.S. health care system has grown increasingly impersonal because of technological advancement, the pharmaceutical boom, and the privatization of public hospitals. But two old-time doctors at Mount Sinai Heart are keeping the human touch alive, and not just for nostalgia’s sake. Muffie Meyer’s sweet-natured, important documentary, Making Rounds, follows Dr. Valentin Fuster, the director of Mount Sinai Heart, and Dr. Herschel Sklaroff, clinical professor of medicine, cardiology, as they lead residents from room to room in the Cardiac Care Unit at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital, diagnosing patients with a refreshing lack of reliance on technology. “We both have the philosophy that the number one objective in medicine is the patient,” Dr. Fuster explains. “We both believe that most of what you learn about a particular patient is at the bedside, not with machines.” Dr. Sklaroff adds, “Dr. Fuster and I make rounds the old-fashioned way. The first thing that we do is go to the patient and hold his hand. With that touch you establish rapport instantly. We were trained to go to the bedside and talk to the patients, and take the perfect history, do the perfect physical, from which one ought to be able to make a diagnosis or come close to a diagnosis, maybe ninety percent of the time.” They display a warm, caring bedside manner as they talk, touch, listen, and teach, examining a sixty-seven-year-old woman with coronary heart disease, a twenty-two-year-old single mother who needs a heart transplant, and a fifty-one-year-old man with cardiomyopathy who resists treatment.
Meyer, who codirected Grey Gardens and has directed many television documentaries and nonfiction miniseries (Twyla on Twyla, Liberty! The American Revolution), includes some surprising facts about the health-care system; for example: “In the U.S., we spend an estimated 700 billion dollars a year on tests and procedures that do not improve health outcomes” and “Every year in the U.S., there are at least half a million misdiagnoses in primary care alone — an estimated 10 to 20% of cases.” She doesn’t use any talking heads to either support or question the doctors’ methods, so it’s all a bit one-sided, but it seems pretty hard to deny the old-timers’ success. After watching this engaging, and, in its own way, scary portrait of a dying art, you’ll never look at your own doctor the same again. Making Rounds opens October 30 at Cinema Village; Meyer and Dr. Sklaroff will participate in a Q&A following the 7:00 show Friday night.