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Two bodies control and limit the power of management. The supreme one, at least in name, is the Board of Trustees, which consists of non-medical dignitaries from the community. The trustees appoint—and fire—the CEO and control his performance. At the Park Hospital only two MDs have voting power on this board: the President and Vice-President of the second controlling body, the Medical Board. The members of this physician-controlled group are elected each year by their fellow hospital physicians. Theoretically, the Medical Board is a democratic body, with a book of bylaws and associated committees and subcommittees elected for various functions.

One of the Board's chief roles is to assess the credentials of physicians who wish to practice in the hospital and to approve the privileges granted to them by the chairpersons of the various departments. The Medical Board represents the highest level of the hospital's quality assurance mechanism and is responsible for maintaining an optimal level of quality care. At the same time, the Medical Board functions as a doctors' union to protect professional and financial interests of the doctors in opposition to hospital administration.

With the authority to appoint, punish, supervise, and protect, the Park's Medical Board is almost omnipotent. It can decapitate or force into resignation a chief of department and even the President himself, which was the fate of Mike Howard's predecessor. In the end, a group of physicians control the Medical Board, the hospital and a large portion of its purse. For many years the domination of the Medical Board at the New York Park rested in the hands of a triumvirate of two surgeons and a physician who had alternated as chairmen and deputies for years.

The oldest was the Vice-Chairman of Surgery, Dr. Joseph Mantzur. In his late sixties and fragile looking, Mantzur was the typical "do-it-all" Brooklyn surgeon. Name it, and he'd do it: general surgery, vascular bypasses and chest operations. Born in Iran, he immigrated to Germany with his aristocratic family before the downfall of the Shah.

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