BGU | MY PATH, Haim Doron, MD

I had already been involved in the issue of management tools while still at Clalit. Even prior to establishment of a national institute to inform health policy, Mordechai Shani, the director at Sheba medical center, and I had established a center for public health that operated for a short time. We asked Shmuel Pinchas, director-general of Hadassah, to prepare the first study under its auspices, a study on medical personnel planning for Israel. After several months of operation of the center, Prof. Dan Michaeli, director-general of the Ministry of Health at the time, vetoed the plan. He felt establishment of an institute for health policy trespassed on roles that belonged to the Ministry of Health. In this, deputy director-general Shraga Haber also agreed. This, I dare say, involved a total lack of understanding of the role of such a center or institute. While Motta Gur, who was Minister of Health, agreed with us, he was unable to convince Michaeli. Three weeks before I left my post as Clalit director-general, I convened a day conference at the Arza Rest & Recuperation facility in the Jerusalem foothills. The group devoted a full day to discussing health policy and health services research in Israel. In addition, I convened at Arza a meeting of Clalit’s advisory committee. Also present at the gathering were John Beck, a distinguished academic physician, who at the time was the chair of an international advisory committee of the school of medicine in the Negev; Prof. Shimon Glick; Prof. Mordechai Shani; and several other individuals whose experience and expertise could make a significant contribution to such a gathering. The main conclusion of the conference was that there was a need to establish a center to discuss health policy and research of health services in Israel on an academic level. Incidentally, I thought it needed to be situated in the Negev. 162 A Sabbatical Invested in First Steps towards Founding a National Institute for Health Policy With my retirement from Clalit in 1988, I went on sabbatical. I decided to devote my sabbatical year to health services research and the establishment of a health policy institute in Israel. I asked my friend Prof. Sheps to assist me organize a suitable sabbatical program. He not only did so, he got in touch with the heads of all the centers I was scheduled to visit during my sabbatical, and developed a coordinated program at the four centers: In addition to the University of North Carolina, there were the Kings Fund in London; Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management in the Boston area, headed by Prof. Stuart Altman; and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). All four arranged lodging and everything else. Sheps even set up meetings at various institutions, as well including, importantly, the NIH (National Institutes of Health) in Washington. During the year, at NIH, and during visits to the other institutions set up by Sheps, I learned a lot in the course of a series of face-to-face meetings with researchers in various aspects of healthcare and management. At the same time, I began to investigate where we could find funding for establishing our own modest NIH for health policy and health service research. In this endeavor, my first step was to contact Prof. Martin Cherkasky. Parallel to his position as director of Albert Einstein Hospital, he was involved in the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), 163 where he tried to mobilize funding, without success. In San Francisco, I was an official guest of UCSF’s Institute for Health Policy Studies, and in the course of my sojourn I encountered a number of researchers who subsequently I would invite to our conferences on healthcare in Israel. Among them was Prof. Philip R. Lee, who founded the Institute in 1972 and served as its director until 1993. In retrospect, he was the most impressive individual I would encounter during my sabbatical. Prof. Lee was a great admirer of Israel. He invited me to teach a seminar at the Institute on the health system in Israel. Afterwards, in 1993, Lee was tapped to serve as United States Assistant Secretary for 162 Prof. Doron stated that “My ties with the Negev remain unbroken to this day, even if physically I don’t live there today.” As noted in Chapter 2, he was forced to leave Beer Sheva due to his working long hours in Tel Aviv. 163 The JDC was founded in 1914, initially to provide assistance to Jews living in Palestine under Turkish rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jewish_Joint_Distribution_Committee

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