October 8, 1998 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Carol Hathaway — the beautiful and compassionate nurse on the hit television show ER — wants to establish a clinic to provide follow-up care to poor people who come to the emergency room at the fictional County General Hospital.
Since the hospital can’t finance the clinic, Ms. Hathaway starts looking through grant-application manuals. When John Carter, a doctor at the hospital and the scion of a wealthy family, runs into her and senses her frustration, he suggests that she try his grandmother, who runs the Carter Family Foundation. Ms. Hathaway visits Millicent Carter, the distinguished family matriarch, who writes a generous check on the spot.
Family foundations don’t often get such prominent roles in prime-time television shows. But ER’s writers have plenty of familiarity with foundations, since they work closely with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, in Menlo Park, Cal., to develop ways to deliver important health messages to viewers of the show.
The fictional Carter Family Foundation depicted last season on ER operates on a much-smaller scale than does Kaiser. But Neal Baer, a practicing physician who is also a top writer on the show, said he hoped the story line would illustrate how much health-care institutions depend on private money to carry out innovative programs.
The show’s plot demonstrated that such support can sometimes be as mercurial as the donor, however.
On one occasion, Millicent Carter stops payment on a check for the clinic because she is upset that her grandson, Dr. Carter, failed to inform her that his cousin was addicted to heroin.
Mrs. Carter also withdrew her support when Ms. Hathaway told government authorities about a sexual relationship between a teen-ager and an older man. The liaison was discovered when the teen-ager sought contraceptives at the clinic.
The grandmother wanted to avoid any publicity, but she then decided to give the money back.
Ultimately, says Dr. Baer, “she saw the bigger picture, which was that there was a necessity for the clinic.”
