BETWEEN the spring of 1977 and the fall of 1978, an astonishing amount of attention was focused on the dispute between the specialist staff at Hunterdon Medical Center and its board of trustees. During that time, approximately 175 articles on this subject appeared in newspapers, including the New York Times and the New York Daily News, and 24 reports appeared in medical journals. Why did this tempest in a rural New Jersey hospital create so much interest? Obviously, the issues were important.The confrontation turned on the issue of the closed hospital-based specialist staff, which had been a key . . .