This week, Pro Publica rolled out “Sick in a Hospital Town,” a five-part series investigating Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, Georgia. Phoebe, as it’s known to residents, is the largest business in town—yet, as Ginger Thompson’s assiduous reporting shows, the hospital doesn’t act like the taxpayer-owned beacon of care it’s supposed to be. On the contrary: As in so many other hospital towns across the country, Phoebe has appeared to pursue profit at the cost of its patients’ well-being. The first part sets the stage for an absolutely jaw-dropping series; don’t be surprised if Thompson picks up her second Pulitzer for this one.
All across Albany, I found evidence of tattered relations between the ho…
This week, Pro Publica rolled out “Sick in a Hospital Town,” a five-part series investigating Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, Georgia. Phoebe, as it’s known to residents, is the largest business in town—yet, as Ginger Thompson’s assiduous reporting shows, the hospital doesn’t act like the taxpayer-owned beacon of care it’s supposed to be. On the contrary: As in so many other hospital towns across the country, Phoebe has appeared to pursue profit at the cost of its patients’ well-being. The first part sets the stage for an absolutely jaw-dropping series; don’t be surprised if Thompson picks up her second Pulitzer for this one.
All across Albany, I found evidence of tattered relations between the hospital and the city. Those with insurance — many of them white or well-off — were critical of the hospital in the same ways as Dorough. They described Phoebe as a behemoth that had unfairly driven off its competition, jacked up its prices and pumped more money into executive salaries than into improving its services. They complained that the hospital’s nonprofit status created a drain on the county’s tax base, and they blamed the hospital’s high fees for their exorbitant health insurance rates.
Those without insurance or on Medicaid — many of them Black and employed in low-wage jobs — complained about the quality of care. They described everything from long waits in the emergency room and dismissive attitudes among nurses and doctors to lapses that cost them or their relatives life and limb. They almost never claimed ownership of the hospital but instead described its leadership and their own stubbornly high rates of disease as vestiges of the institution’s history, throughout which whites set the hospital’s priorities and expected African Americans to go along or go elsewhere, knowing there wasn’t anywhere else.
More picks about hospitals and healthcare
Profits and False Promises
Sofi Thanhauser | Virginia Quarterly Review | November 13, 2025 | 4,915 words
“How the war on cancer is good for business.”
She Ate a Poppy Seed Salad Just Before Giving Birth. Then They Took Her Baby Away.
Shoshana Walter | The Marshall Project | September 9, 2024 | 4,138 words
” Hospitals use drug tests that return false positives from poppy seed bagels, decongestants and Zantac. Yet newborns are being taken from parents based on the results.”
Last Resorts
Cassandra Kislenko | The Baffler | March 29, 2023 | 1,887 words
“Disabled people and advocates fear that medically assisted suicide will become a weapon for the state to do away with what capitalism considers unproductive bodies.”
Your Next Hospital Bed Might Be at Home
Helen Ouyang | The New York Times Magazine | January 26, 2023 | 6,423 words
“In a time of strained capacity, the ‘hospital at home’ movement is figuring out how to create an inpatient level of care anywhere.”
‘We Can’t Even Get Basic Care Done’: What it’s Like Doing 12-Hour Shifts on an Understaffed NHS Ward
William Fear | The Guardian | January 5, 2022 | 4,016 words
“When I started as a healthcare assistant on a hospital ward for older patients, it was clear how bad things had got.”
No Health, No Care
Marquisele Mercedes | Pipe Wrench | May 17, 2022 | 6,187 words
The big fat loophole in the Hippocratic Oath.