Despite improvement, the Medical Association's annual survey reveals: Waiting times for surgery are still unbearable • In the lowlands wait a year for tonsillectomy • In Gush Dan: 11 months • Patients are discouraged: "Difficult implications for the medical condition"

• Fourier Hospital // Photo: Gil Eliyahu-Ginny

Unimaginable: No less than two full years, the residents of the Galilee and the Jordan Valley have to wait in line for vital surgery to remove tonsils at the fertile government hospital in Tiberias.

This is true for both child and adult surgery, so much so that a senior employee in the pediatric Nose and Throat Department said in a call intended for surgery that "the queues are very distant and irrelevant, they are the order of two years, they are the longest in the country."

• There is improvement but the situation is still not good

If you are a lowland resident, you will be waiting a full year for adult tonsillectomy at Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot and Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. While the children are members of a general health fund in the Petah Tikva area and Gush Dan have to wait 11 months for the same vital surgery at Schneider Children's Hospital. This is what emerges from the new 2019-2020 Medical Association's annual survey, whose data are first revealed here.

According to the survey data, since 2018, surgery queues have been shortened in a significant number of hospitals in several types of surgeries, indicating that the Ministry of Health's massive efforts and budgeting in recent years to shorten surgery queues have already achieved achievements in this area in public hospitals.

An unlikely time

However, according to the new survey data, the queues are still very long, up to a year or more. So the northern residents have to wait 11 months in line for vital eye cataract surgery at Poriah Hospital, while Gush Dan residents have to wait 9 months in line for the same surgery at Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, Israel's largest hospital.

These data come up in a new survey conducted in November-December 2019 by the Medical Association through the Survey of Queue Testing for 5 essential surgeries (hernia surgery, orthopedic knee replacement surgery, cataract eye surgery, and tonsillectomy in children and adults in the nasal lobe). Public hospitals: Ichilov hospitals in Tel Aviv, Assaf physician in Tzrifin, Assuta in Ashdod, Beilinson and Schneider in Petah Tikva, Nahariya Western Galilee Hospital, Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem, Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheva, Poria Hospital in Tiberias , Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Sheba Hospital in Tel Hashomer and the Sand House Barzilai Sea in Ashkelon.

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The survey was conducted through recorded telephone calls from the surveyors, who called the call waiting centers in the hospitals and asked to book the nearest queue for surgery for them or their family member. The queue for surgery is determined in the survey as the waiting period for the surgery itself, and does not include the wait for examination to the physician who will determine the need and urgency.

However, the authors of the survey note that in some hospitals the waiting time in line for the doctor's examination is particularly long and "unlikely," and is sometimes "longer than the waiting time for the surgery itself." For example, the survey revealed that Kaplan Hospital has a one-year wait for a doctor's examination, and then another year of waiting for tonsillectomy in children. While in Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, according to the survey, there is a 3-month waiting period for the doctor's examination, plus a month and a half of waiting for the surgery itself.

According to the survey, some surgeries revealed "unreasonable waiting time, such as a one to two year wait for tonsillectomy in adults and children in Fourier and Kaplan hospitals." Another survey revealed that "there is a lack of transparency and comparative data on the public surgery queues."

According to the survey data, the longest wait for hernia surgery is in Poria and Kaplan hospitals (4.5-5 months), the longest waiting for knee joint surgery is in Poria and Tel Hashomer (5-4 months).

Pediatric tonsillectomy has a 6-7 month wait in Rambam and Tel Hashomer hospitals, while ocular cataract surgery has a 7-6 month wait in Barzilai and Asaf physician and 4.5-3.5 months in Rambam and Nahariya hospitals. The data from Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheva, the largest hospital in the south of the country, are not included in the survey, as according to the survey's authors, it was not possible to obtain telephone information to make an appointment at the hospital.

The survey found that in the north there is a particularly severe problem of surgery queues, and so did the 51-year-old Ram Ravoni, from Kibbutz Hukuk, a yoga teacher's guide, who, on the recommendation of his doctors, had to have a hernia surgery after suffering severe pain and severe unpleasantness. He was referred by a general health fund where he is a member of surgery in Poria, where according to the survey data, the waiting time for surgery is about 5 months - the longest in the country.

Indeed, Ram was examined at Poria Hospital in January 2019 and was scheduled for 3 months later, but then he was postponed for another two months, and after that was also postponed, surgery was scheduled for May 2019, about 5 months after he was diagnosed with a vital need for surgery, And the surgery went through successfully.

Shifra and Erez Matityahu. "The surgery was delayed by six months" // Photo: Eyal Margolin - Ginny

According to Ram, "while waiting for surgery, pain and unpleasantness continued, and the hospital's conduct on the queue was poor and unpleasant."

Ram also notes that, following his long wait for surgery in Poria, he received a recommendation to undergo surgery at Rambam Hospital in Haifa (which, according to the survey, is much shorter) but refused to confirm it at a general health clinic and said he was "affiliated with Fourier Hospital" It is wrong and unfair to do so from the box office. "

In another case, 12-year-old Erez Matityahu from Kibbutz Kfar Hanassi needed tonsillectomy after his respiratory exacerbation, which led to sleep disorders. Erez was examined privately in May 2019 by a senior nose doctor in Rosh Pina, who recommended his parents Shifra and my father for urgent surgery and asked for an appointment as soon as possible for surgery at Ziv Government Hospital in Safed. However, the appointment for the doctor's examination at Ziv Hospital was only scheduled for August 2019, and the doctor's examination at the hospital also stated that the surgery should be performed very urgently and that it is of great importance to perform the surgery even before the start of the school year. But then the queue for his contempt was taken six months later.

Ram I did. Wait long for hernia surgery

Shifra Matityahu says, "We were in dire straits and didn't understand how urgent surgery could be for another six months." She said then friends who know hospital staff were recruited for them, and they were able to help them get ahead of the September 2019 queue, and the surgery was successful.

According to Shifra, "a six-month delay in the surgery defined by the doctors themselves could have serious consequences for the medical condition and damage to the chances of successful surgery and rehabilitation."

"A reality that must not be accepted"

Fouria Hospital said: "We are working on several levels to narrow the queue. Within a few weeks, three new operating rooms were opened and then our ability to respond is doubled."

Beilinson Hospital said: "There are more than 2,000 surgeries each year, and in the aftermath of March, activity for the afternoon will be expanded to add another 600 surgeries a year."

Kaplan Hospital said: "We are doing everything possible to shorten the queues."

Schneider said: "The demand for surgery at the Schneider Center is very high and, as a result, the waiting time for surgery is extended. In cases of medical urgency and complexity, the waiting time is significantly reduced."

Prof. Zion Hagai, chairman of the Medical Association , said in response to the survey's findings that "we welcome the improvement recorded in the waiting time for surgery, but unfortunately the findings are still far from satisfactory and certainly not close to the promises made by the Ministry of Health. We also urge the Ministry of Health to adopt more transparent norms that will allow the public to observe waiting times. "

The Ministry of Health said: "The Ministry of Health has transferred a cumulative amount of approximately NIS 2.7 billion to hospitals and hospitals since 2016. In addition, the Ministry of Health has issued circular on waiting time for surgery."