State comptroller: Israel's health funds struggling to serve North and South

Israel's health funds (kupot holim) are unable to provide some services in-person to towns in the geographic periphery, Israel's State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman said in a report released Tuesday.

In Eilat, for example, the funds offer services in just 25 medical specialties, and only four of these (OBGYN, pediatrics, family medicine, and optometry) are offered in all of the funds, the report said. This in a city of more than 57,000 residents.

Of the 32 medical specialties available to residents of Safed, 11 are not offered to those insured by Clalit, which insures around 17,100 people, the report also noted.

Additionally, in the geographic periphery, in many specialties, there is just one doctor available working in that field, according to the report. This means residents have no choice of doctor and cannot switch doctors.

This not only prevents competition, it hurts the level of service the residents receive, the report said.

The periphery will also likely be more severely impacted by the Health Ministry's reform in which it stopped recognizing a number of medical schools outside of Israel where some Israelis pursue medical degrees.

While 34% of those who were licensed in 2022 area graduates of these schools, in the southern region, this number is 51%, and in the northern region, 63%.

Doctors who studied in Israeli institutions are primarily concentrated in Jerusalem, the country's center, and Haifa.

Doctors per capita

The report also reviewed the number of doctors per capita in Israel, noting that predictions show that Israel will continue to have fewer doctors per capita than the OECD average. While the OECD average of doctors per capita held steady at 3.5 doctors per 1,000 people between 2020 and 2035, predictions for Israel showed 3.16 doctors per 1,000 people in 2019, and 3.02 in 2035.

Additionally, Israel has the highest rate of doctors aged 55 and up in the OECD, following Italy, with 48% of the Israel’s doctors older than 55 in 2020 compared to the OECD average of 33% that year.

While the health ministry has plans in place to increase the number of doctors in the long run, the report noted, in the short and medium term, the ministry's work on this topic has not been completed and there is no full plan with goals and measures of success, the report said.

"Different publications by the ministry are based on different statistics and present different numbers of doctors," said the report.