BGU | MY PATH, Haim Doron, MD

Again, I made every effort to bring top-notch physicians to head Meir’s hospital departments. A short time after I became Clalit’s medical director in 1976, we grappled with the question who could best direct the sick fund’s primary department for lung patients. There was a candidate at Hadassah Ein Karem in Jerusalem, but we weren’t sure this individual was the right person for the job. I decided, together with a green light from Moshe Soroka, to go abroad to look for a suitable candidate. Soroka recalled that there had been an Argentine doctor at Beilinson Hospital in Petach Tikva who dealt with pulmonary diseases as an internist, not a surgeon. The physician had left the country and Moshe Soroka suggested I interview him. I immediately told the Jewish Agency to invite him for an interview. I arrived at the cubbyhole-like office at the Jewish Agency in New York, and he also arrived. We didn’t know one another well, but we spoke in Spanish and hit it off. Before the interview, Moshe Soroka and I agreed that in this case it was an open market since this was a core department of the hospital and it justified a substantial investment. The interviewee told me that his specialty needed a team that I surely couldn’t provide. I asked, “Like what?” And he enumerated the number of required doctors, nurses, specialized technicians, and so forth. I made a list and told him we would take care of bringing all these staff. He was taken aback, and then added he would also need equipment - this and that device. I made a list and told him we agreed to that also. The doctor was visibly flustered, and invited me to go with him and his wife to the theater that evening. I was so keen to convince him and bring him on board that I agreed to go. I was dead tired, and hoped I wouldn’t nod off in the middle of the play. Afterwards he left his wife and accompanied me to my hotel, where he admitted with candor, “To tell you the truth, I’m not interested in going back to Israel.” And that was the end of our negotiations. In the same trip I interviewed other doctors for other positions; but I returned to Israel empty-handed in the pulmonology department. In the end, the Hadassah Ein Karem candidate was appointed; and for many years, the department was very successful in treating lung patients. We were able to bring to Meir hospital some excellent senior physicians mentored by Prof. Efrati at Kaplan Hospital, such as Prof. Kleeman, who was appointed a department head, and Prof. Arieh Rozenstein, an immigrant from Argentina who took up the position of director of Meir’s labs while also heading the life science department at Bar-Ilan University. In light of the high standards Meir Hospital maintained, there was never a question about affiliating the hospital to the Tel Aviv University School of Medicine as a university teaching hospital. Later, other eminent physicians joint the staff as department heads, such as Prof. Yossi Mekori, an internist who is a renowned scholar in the field of allergy and clinical immunology. 75 In my last year at Clalit, I found a donor to establish what became known as the Felsenstein Medical Research Institute which was originally at Meir hospital and now is under the wing of the Schneider Children’s Hospital. I appointed Prof. Mekori to head the Institute. The Beilinson hospital's people were unhappy with this decision, feeling the post should have been filled by someone from inside Beilenson, not Meir hospital. I found it difficult to grasp their argument. After all the distance between the two cities - Kfar Saba and Petach Tikva - was a mere ten minute ride; but I was unsuccessful in convincing them of the logic behind my choice. 76 With the opening of the Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba, a special auditorium was established for conferences on clinical topics. I thought it was fitting to name this auditorium for Prof. Josef Kott, who at the time the decision was made to establish the Meir Hospital was the director of the Invalid Fund and the chairman of Israel’s Magen David Adom. 77 I had first met Prof. Kott when he visited Argentina before I made Aliyah . In fact, his home in Tel Aviv was the first place my wife and I visited when we arrived in Israel in 1953. 75 Prof. Yossi Mekori (1948 - ) went to Tel Aviv University’s medical school, graduating in 1975, and served as dean of that school from 2006 2014. Since 2015, he has been the president of Tel-Hai College in the Galilee. 76 In the subtext to this statement, Doron was signaling to Israeli readers that he elected to use objective criteria, while Beilinson personnel were miffed by the challenge to the status quo in the power matrix of seniority and prestige: Beilinson was a larger and older organization; whereas Meir was newer and perceived as an upstart. 77 Similar to the Red Cross, and meaning “Red Star of David,” Magen David Adom is Israel’s national pre-hospital emergency rescue squad, ambulance fleet, and blood service.

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