BGU | MY PATH, Haim Doron, MD

It was not easy to fill urgent needs at Loewenstein Hospital for medical staff during the Yom Kippur War. It was not easy for doctors who up until then worked in a totally different field of medicine to suddenly define themselves as doctors dedicated to rehabilitation medicine -- all the more so since at the time, this field was still in its early stages in Israel. Many of the doctors from the Latin America aliyah in the Negev 113 rose to the challenge and some have continued at Loewenstein to this very day. When Prof. Nachenson retired after 20 years as director of Loewenstein Hospital, a disagreement broke out between the Clalit directorate and Loewenstein Hospital’s scientific council headed by Prof. Shmuel Tiyano. Our candidate to direct the hospital was Prof. Reuven Adler who was a neurologist. He had been chief medical officer of the IDF and dean of the Beer Sheva School of Health Professions. He also engaged for years in research. I thought he was the most suitable, but the Loewenstein doctors opposed this. They argued through their scientific council that the director should come from within the hospital. The disagreement was fierce. Opposition to Adler’s appointment had nothing to do with the heart of the matter and was unreasonable. It rested on vested interests -- union issues -- of the doctors on staff, who were pressuring to appoint one of their own people. Ultimately, the doctor’s union lost, and Prof. Adler became the director of Loewenstein Hospital. Nonetheless, I view the fact that the scientific council operates as part of the doctor’s union representation as a flaw. I also object to the prevailing model within the doctor's professional organization where at the Israel Medical Association’s convention, representatives on the scientific council are voted on in the same fashion that the doctor’s union representatives are chosen. Although past chairs of the scientific council also pointed out this defect to me in private conversations, those conversations were only after their term of office was up. I was also convinced that a professional ambulatory rehabilitation center needs to be located on- site of a rehabilitation hospital. My logic was that it was important to forge continuity in rehabilitative treatment so that persons still hospitalized can begin as soon as possible to take their first steps forward rebuilding their lives. On this point I had differences of opinion with members of the management, primarily Yoel Palgi who was in charge of construction. He argued that there were budgetary constraints and that it was impossible to build a professional ambulatory rehabilitation center in the hospital. There were, indeed, merits on both sides. I said I would ask the government for a budget. I met with Minister of Labor Moshe Katzav to convince him that National Insurance should underwrite establishment of an ambulatory rehabilitation center at Loewenstein. It worked, and he decided to budget the necessary funds. Anyone who visits Loewenstein Hospital can’t miss the professional ambulatory rehabilitation center in the main building that was built in partnership with the Ministry of Labor and the National Insurance Institute. Beit Rivka Geriatric Hospital 114 Clalit’s “Invalid Fund” established Rivka House as a nursing home facility in Petach Tikva. It is the nature of geriatric hospitals for long-term nursing care that they need to become rehabilitative geriatric hospitals - otherwise they have no future. During my tenure at the helm, I took it as a personal mission to establish a new building and to bring a specialist in geriatrics to serve as director. I brought Dr. Shai Brill, 115 who was previously a geriatrician at Sheba Medical Center and continues to serve as director of Rivka House to this day. 113 See Chapter 2, The Plan to Bring Doctors from Latin America to the Negev. 114 Rivka House ( Beit Rivka in Hebrew, today Geriatric Medical Center Rivka House) was founded in 1957 by the Clalit and the ‘Invalid Fund’. The hospital was named after Rivka Novak, a social worker and chair of the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO) during the pre-state period. She was a member of Petach Tikva’s second governing council and an activist in welfare and long-term healthcare needs. 115 Dr. Shai Brill studied medicine at Tel Aviv University. He then specialized in internal medicine at Beilinson hospital and geriatrics at Sheba Hospital. He served as a physician in the IDF in a variety of posts. Since 1990, he has been hospital director and director of the geriatric rehabilitation department at Rivka House.

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