BGU | MY PATH, Haim Doron, MD

Some examples are in order: During the Yom Kippur War, Soroka was completing construction of the new Loewenstein Hospital. He was in charge of all the physical plant, and I gave the new hospital its content as a rehabilitation hospital. I provided the necessary personnel and equipment, according to standards at similar rehabilitation centers abroad. The same was the case in Eilat: Soroka built the hospital that was later named for Giora Yoseftal, and I provided the content for it to function both as a regional hospital and provider of medical services in the community. From the outset of my work at Clalit headquarters, addressing the medical level of sick fund’s hospitals was a top priority for me. I did this with a painstaking search in Israel and abroad for the best candidates for appointments as department heads and senior physicians in Clalit. Panels were involved in making the actual appointments. These decision-makers included representatives of the doctors' union who had little knowledge about the candidates and whose preferences were colored by vested interests of one or another kind. I drove such panels crazy in my demand that the appointments be objective and unbiased. With the exception of one case where I was outmaneuvered, I believe in all the other cases, I succeeded in assuring that the merits of the candidates determined the outcome over personal interests. In 24- or 48-hour “quickie trips” abroad, I interviewed doctors who were suitable for senior hospital posts. I also thought it was possible to mobilize Israeli doctors who were interested in returning home or were vacillating about whether to do so, as well as tapping into Zionist reservoirs, i.e., Jewish doctors who were already interested in making aliyah, or could be coaxed to do so. Thus, for example, I brought Dr. Michael Blumental 71 back to Israel from New York. He became head of ophthalmology at Soroka Hospital in Beer Sheva. And I found physicians, not only in New York, but also in Buenos Aires, Chicago, London, Washington, Paris, and elsewhere, bringing doctors who strengthened Israel’s health system and raised its level. All Clalit hospitals achieved high academic standard during my tenure. I viewed the “trinity” of service, education, and research, as an inseparable whole. To the best of my ability, I encouraged not just medical education, but also research. Most of Clalit’s hospital departments were already recognized for specialization; and for those that weren’t, I did everything in my power to prepare them for such status. The Emek Hospital in Afula in the Jezreel Valley The Emek Hospital in Afula, built in 1930, was Clalit’s first hospital, replacing the prefab ‘hospital hut’ at kibbutz Ein Harod that had been founded in 1923. From 1930 on, the Emek Hospital was headed by eminent physicians and Zionist pioneers. Over the years, excellent doctors joined the staff in waves of aliyah of physicians from various countries. Some from South America were brought in the program to place physicians in underserved rural and frontier settlements. The primary problem of the Emek Hospital in my time was doctors’ living conditions. We planned that the physicians would live within the hospital compound as was already the practice at Kaplan Hospital. The senior physicians revolted against such arrangements and embarked on a struggle for the right to live elsewhere. I realized there was a process afoot that would be hard to stop. I surmised that it would be enough if we had within the hospital compound only the standby physicians and physicians on alert, which would allow department heads to commute from their place of residence within close proximity to the hospital; and that is what we did. 71 Prof. Michael Blumenthal (1935 - 2007), who was born in Tiberias, studied medicine (1954) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and specialized in ophthalmology at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital (1965). He worked in African countries (1965-1966) and then went to study in New York. He returned to Israel, and from 1970-1976 served as director of the ophthalmology department at Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheva. After 1976, until 1993, he managed the ophthalmology department at Sheba Medical Center. In 1984, he founded the Ein Tal Center for Ophthalmology in Tel Aviv; and in 1985, he was appointed a full professor at Tel Aviv University. In 1997, he developed a cataract surgery method that is named after him.

48