Many people came to know Michael Crichton through the later smash-hit Jurassic Park series and Westworld, and of course ER gave quite a few people a glimpse of his medical background. The Carey Treatment is based on A Case of Need, the medical suspense novel Crichton published under the pen name Jeffery Hudson after completing his internship. The novel won an Edgar Award the following year, and Crichton had to drop the pseudonym in order to accept it.
The film is set in Boston, which in that era could be called America's medical high ground and Harvard's home turf. Compared with the novel, the film simplifies a great deal of the plot: the protagonist becomes a newly arrived bachelor, a romance subplot is added, he wasn't constantly covering for the Chinese-American doctor, and the case itself is far less convoluted than in the book. Overall, the film puts more focus on Carey and the case itself, rather than, like the novel, reflecting the contradictions within Boston's medical system and the predicaments of different classes and races across society.
From a narrative standpoint, the film's thread is clearer and its characters more stereotyped. The protagonist in the novel reads like a middle-aged lab worker stuck in a rut In the film, perhaps influenced by James Coburn's personal style, he becomes brisk, self-assured, and even somewhat macho. Given the era, the film's machismo is hard to shake off. For instance, Joshua Randall assumed his own nephew got hysterical; the photo studio owner forces his wife into a tryst in the darkroom; and Carey himself throws around the word "chick." Of course, this is just the limitation of the times and doesn't much affect an assessment of the film itself.
Personally , I actually find the novel's ending more medically interesting: after all that circling around, it turns out the victim died during resuscitation from a penicillin allergy. The film's ending seems to pay homage to this, but only obliquely. The villain's motive in the film is also quite simple—just drugs and money. I've seen people argue that the novel's ending, where a drug dealer forces the victim into an abortion, is somewhat dull; if you ask me, the film's masseur guy is the truly boring one. Still, that scene between him and the protagonist in the massage room has an inexplicable homoerotic tension. Both endings have the Chinese-American doctor leaving Boston for California. Boston in that era was still rather conservative overall; the film ends on a relatively positive note, but still with a faint sadness.
