Seven Israeli public hospitals will switch to “Shabbat mode” beginning Wednesday due to a persistent financial crisis.
The hospitals – Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Hadassah-University Medical Center, Netanya’s Laniado Medical Center, Ma’aynei Hayeshua Medical Center in Bnei Brak, and three hospitals in Nazareth – will only accept patients in need of life saving treatments.
Their directors informed Israel’s emergency service Magen David Adom and the Health Ministry that all other patients will need to be evacuated to other facilities.
The centers are all located in cities which are classified as red or orange according to the ministry’s coronavirus “Traffic Light” system. All together they serve a population of about two million people. On Monday they stopped accepting COVID patients.
The so-called “public” hospitals are independent organizations that rely mostly on donations, as opposed to facilities directly owned and funded by the government or health funds.
The hospitals began protesting in January due to their financial difficulties, with organizers saying their facilities were receiving only about half the funds per bed that government-owned hospitals received.
The crisis ended when the government agreed to increase their budgets.
However, since the beginning of the summer, the hospitals have said authorities have not been fulfilling their promises.
On Monday, the directors-general of the Health and Finance ministries, Prof. Nachman Ash and Ram Blinkov, met with other relevant officials to ensure that the budgets promised to the hospitals will be allocated and available as soon as possible.
According to a statement, the government committed to the budget for the first half of the year, but the ministers said they will work to maintain it for the rest of 2021 while speeding up payments.
“I fully appreciate the sacred work that is being carried out at the hospitals in Israel,” Blinkov said. “I expect that the public hospitals will continue to provide answers to the Israeli public at this complex time in light of our commitment to maintaining the agreement with them in full.”
However, the hospital heads have been lamenting the lack of communication and concrete steps.
“No negotiations have been opened with us, no one talks to us,” they said. “We cannot pay suppliers with understanding and sympathy for our problems. We demand to open direct negotiations to resolve the crisis. Tonight the prime minister takes off from here and leaves us to fight corona with cartridges without bullets. We expect him to intervene in the crisis.”
Also on Tuesday, the Knesset Health Committee announced that they will hold a session on the crisis on August 31.
In addition, the leaders of the ultra-Orthodox parties urged Knesset Speaker Mickey Levy to reconvene the plenum for an emergency session, despite recess, to address the crisis.