BGU | MY PATH, Haim Doron, MD

CHAPTER 11

Health Policy and Health Services Research: My Endeavors after Leaving Clalit

Israel’s National Institute for Health Policy and Health Services Research Efforts to Guide Health Policy Issues during my Tenure at Clalit’s Headquarters In the first stages of establishing a medical school in Beer Sheva, I got to know Prof. Cecil Sheps 160 who was an eminent American figure in public health. We became acquainted at the University of North Carolina and became good friends. During my tenure as the medical director and then as director-general of Clalit, I recognized the need to appoint someone of Sheps’ stature as an advisor for the organization of the sick fund’s health services. One day, I was sitting in a consultation meeting with Sheps, and I told him that Clalit had 30,000 employees in all positions. I wanted to ask his advice about how to organize their training. With this objective in mind, Sheps brought with him one of the senior directors of health in the United States. They traveled across the country together, visiting Clalit’s institutions and submitted a report. In accordance with the report’s conclusions, I established an institute for employee training, and located it in the training center’s prefabs, facing Beilinson Hospital in Petach Tikva. When I left Clalit, I was presented with an office in this training center where I worked for several years, a room with a secretary and another room that served as an archive. I appointed an international advisory commission headed by Prof. Martin Cherkasky, who for many years was director of the Albert Einstein Hospital affiliated with Yeshiva University in New York. Prof. Saul Farber, Dean of NYU’s School of Medicine, and Prof. Howard Newman, 161 an expert in the field of healthcare administration and Dean of NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service, served on the committee. The committee would convene approximately once a year and all the members were consultants to Clalit. It never occurred to those who had preceded me in my senior posts at Clalit headquarters to consult with an outsider or have an advisory panel of international experts. They viewed the sick fund and its problems within the boundaries of local realities, and they approached such problems from a day-to-day operations perspective. But I had a broader mamlachti approach to the role of the institution. This was the first step leading to establishment of a national institute to examine health policy and health service performance. I completed my leadership roles in Clalit with the convention held in May 1988. After twenty- seven years of service in three key roles in Clalit, and in light of the experience I had gained, I believed health policy and research of health services was an important topic that the State of Israel needed to develop. I also felt this realm was germane to the health system as a whole in Israel, not just Clalit, and I decided to focus on this matter after I left Clalit. In short, I felt that what I and my predecessors knew about the system, gained from our experience and dedication to health matters, was not enough. There was a need for research and analysis of the data to inform development of health policy and further development of management tools for the future.

160 Prof. Cecil G. Sheps (1913-2004) was a physician and scholar who founded the Center for Health Service Research at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), which, in 1991, was named for him. Between 1980- 1988, he served as organizational advisor to Clalit. 161 Prof. Howard Neil Nauman (1935-2011) was a specialist in health systems management and public health. He was a manager in the Health Care Financing Administration in the US during the Carter Administration (1976-1980). He later served as dean of NYU’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service (1988-1994) and was a professor of healthcare administration. He was knowledgeable about the Israel health system and served on the American advisory council of the Brookdale Institute in Israel.

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