This image is the cover for the book Final Diagnosis

Final Diagnosis

The #1New York Timesbestselling author’s classic novel of life and death drama inside a major American hospital—“easy to read and hard to stop reading” (Kirkus Reviews).


Change is in the air when a new board chairman sets out to modernize and expand Three Counties Hospital in Burlington, Pennsylvania—a once venerable institution whose standards have slipped. Dynamic Dr. Kent O’Donnell, a Harvard Medical School–trained surgeon, accepts the board’s offer to lead and reform the rundown, disorganized hospital because he wants to make his mark on the world.

As medical-board president, O’Donnell faces his greatest challenge in Dr. Joe Pearson, Three Counties’ elderly head pathologist. Once an excellent diagnostician, Pearson is now out of touch with the latest research and procedures in laboratory medicine. But if the hospital lets the imperious doctor go, it risks losing an important benefactor’s financial support.

Arthur Hailey’s fascinating, dramatic, and scrupulously researched story reveals both the professional, personal, and romantic aspects of an administrator-surgeon’s life, as well as the tragedies and moments of joy that occur every day in a hospital—a place where life often begins and ends.

Arthur Hailey

Arthur Hailey (1920–2004), the author of eleven novels, many of which became #1 New York Times bestsellers, was born in Luton, England. He served as a pilot and flight lieutenant in the British Royal Air Force during World War II and immigrated to Canada in 1947. While working for a transportation trade magazine, he scored his first writing success with a television drama, and began to write screenplays full-time for various networks during the golden age of live television. His novel-writing career took off in 1959 with the publication of his first novel, The Final Diagnosis, and picked up velocity with Hotel and then Airport, which spent thirty weeks in the number-one spot on the New York Times bestseller list and became a blockbuster film. Hailey’s novels, many of which have been made into films, television series, and miniseries, have been translated into forty languages. They are notable for their suspenseful storylines and authentic depictions of various industries and commercial settings, which Hailey aggressively and meticulously researched.

Open Road Integrated Media