BGU | MY PATH, Haim Doron, MD

This promoted tightening the linkage between hospital doctors and community medicine. The hospitals in the Jezreel Valley and in the Negev were the first to implement this important reform, and it exists to this day. The New Carmel Hospital in Haifa The first event I participated in as Clalit medical director was the opening of the new Carmel Hospital. One of my first decisions as director of the medical division was not to close or sell the old hospital building, which had been built in 1935, but to house two new departments there - the psychiatric and the geriatric departments – where they would be in proximity to the general hospital. This decision, as elsewhere, derived from my outlook that there should be no division between physical medicine (the body) and mental medicine (the mind), and this is my perspective to this day. We tapped outstanding individuals to head the new Carmel Hospital’s departments. I would cite, in particular, cardiology, where there was a cardinal problem that needed to be addressed: The main hospital in Haifa was, and remains, Rambam. Rambam’s heart surgery department did not adequately fill the needs of the northern region. I could not reconcile with such a reality and aspired to solve the problem through the auspices of the new Carmel Hospital. But, the director-general of the Ministry of Health did not agree to establishing a heart surgery department at Carmel. His position on the matter was motivated by the vested interests of government hospitals that included Rambam hospital in Haifa. Consequently, I brought in one of the most senior physicians at Hadassah in Jerusalem, Prof. Gideon Marin, to open such a department at the new Carmel Hospital. To overcome the opposition of the Ministry of Health director-general, I agreed that Prof. Marin would conduct surgery once or twice a week at Rambam. That solved the problem, and thus the new Carmel Hospital acquired an outstanding heart surgery department. As director of cardiology, I appointed Prof. Basil Lewis, an outstanding Hadassah cardiologist, perhaps one of the most eminent in the country at the time. Collaboration between Prof. Lewis in cardiology and Prof. Marin in surgery gave inhabitants in the North an excellent solution to the problem of cardiology in that part of the country. Later Prof. Marin returned to Jerusalem, first to Shaare Zedek hospital, then to serve for many years as director of heart surgery at Hadassah. During my tenure, I also united two adjoining geographical regions - Haifa and the western Galilee into one regional region, appointing the Western Galilee director to head the new entity. Such a move contributed to enhancing the level of medical services in the area as a whole. The Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba Originally, the Meir Hospital was a special facility for patients with pulmonary conditions. Mass immigration of Jews from the Diaspora in the late 1940s and early 1950s brought many persons with tuberculosis into the country. With funding from the “Invalid Fund,” 72 Clalit built a tuberculosis hospital in Kfar Saba, in the Sharon region. Over the years, a concerted effort by health services in Israel had successfully curtailed the incidence of TB in Israel by the late 1950s. The management at Clalit had come to the conclusion that there was no justification for maintaining a special tuberculosis facility; and needs could be incorporated within a general hospital with a major pulmonology department at what became the Meir Hospital. 73 Meir Hospital is responsible for hospital-level care in the area north and northeast of Tel Aviv proper, encompassing the cities of Herzlyia, Kfar Saba, Ra’anana and the concentration of Arab villages and towns eastward, in the vicinity of the Green Line. 74

72 This fund was established by Clalit during the British Mandate period (1918-1949) to provide health services to the disabled. Labelled the “Invalid Fund” in English, in Hebrew it is Keren Hanechut – fund for “physically-challenged” or “special needs populations.” 73 Meir hospital is named after Dr. Yosef Meir, the medical director of the Clalit between the years 1928-1948. 74 The Green Line, drawn as part of the armistice agreements in 1949, demarcates Israel from the West Bank.

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