The Procedure

Death is a daily, sometimes hourly, occurrence at St. Vincent's Hospital in Buffalo, New York. Now, in his pressure cooker career, Dr. Earl Garnet has broken the cardinal rule of modern medicine: he publicly blames a powerful HMO for practicing "no-fault murder" in the death of an eighteen-month-old baby. The HMO swiftly strikes back, igniting a debilitating boycott of the hospital. But after several accidents nearly cost patients their lives, the true bloodletting begins. A doctor is found sprawled out in the parking lot, his throat cut ear to ear.

Blamed for instigating the chaos, Earl Garnet knows that he faces more than a deadly power play. The doctor may have uncovered a conspiracy reaching from the halls of one of the nation's most influential HMOs to a small, experimental clinic in Mexico, where yet another of his patients went for treatment and disappeared. To find answers, Garnet must wade deep into the murky, surreal workings of today's health care industry.