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A different perspective; Wreck, grueling recovery give N.Y. hospital execdeeper appreciation of healthcare delivery.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Cinda Becker

Pamela Brier and her husband, Peter Ashkenasy, were coveting a few relaxing days at their second home in upstate New York before submerging themselves into their respective careers when, "in the twinkling of an eye,'' Brier says, "this happened.''

It was 1 or 2 in the morning on July 3, 2003, and they were on a back road only five minutes from their destination when Ashkenasy fell asleep at the wheel and crashed the car into a tree. Charlie, the couple's Chesapeake Bay retriever, was riding in the back seat and escaped unscathed, but between them Brier and Ashkenasy broke too many bones to count.

Paramedics arrived quickly, extracted them from the car using the Jaws of Life-"such an interesting term,'' Brier says-and airlifted them by helicopter to Albany Medical Center. Brier credits the car's air bags and the hospital's trauma center for saving her husband's life. The doctors say they never saw anyone injured as badly as he was because most people injured that severely do not survive such accidents, she says.

That one fleeting moment, which Brier cannot remember, cascaded into a medical odyssey that continues to this day, some nine months later. Thanks to Brier's career as a hospital administrator, Ashkenasy, 61, and Brier, 58, both benefited from the best healthcare that expertise could buy. It hasn't been so much an eye-opening experience as one that validates everything Brier already knew intellectually, she says.

"You cannot plan for a catastrophe like this,'' Brier says. She should know because if anyone could have planned for it, she would have.

The night of the accident was supposed to be the calm before the storm of a busy summer for Brier and Ashkenasy, who have been happily married since 1997. As the owner of Central Park's Sheep Meadow Cafe and Concert Foods, a...