Nursing and geriatric hospitals warn government: "We are facing an economic collapse, due to special spending on the fifth wave of the corona."
According to the hospital managements, as a result, there may be severe damage to the thousands of patients hospitalized with them, a step that will harm the entire hospitalization system for patients in Israel.
Israel Today has learned that in the last two years, non-governmental geriatric institutions and hospitals have received special support because of the corona crisis, which is estimated at NIS 200 million a year, while this year the Ministry of Finance decided not to budget it again. Following this, Itzik Cohen, director general of the Geriatrics Association in Israel, which represents 54 publicly and privately owned geriatric institutions, warned yesterday that "an economic collapse of geriatric hospitals, its immediate meaning - evacuating hundreds of complex and respiratory patients to general hospitals, will cause a collapse. The entire national hospitalization, and an apocalyptic horror scenario in which the State of Israel will be required to choose who will receive medical treatment and who will not. .
About 400 corona patients are already hospitalized in these institutions, and at the same time about 200 workers are missing due to infection with the virus.
Vaccination of the elderly in nursing homes (archive, those photographed have nothing to do with the news), Photo: Yossi Zeliger - Archive
On Tuesday, Dr. Galit Kaufman, director general of Beit Balev, the network of rehabilitation centers and sheltered housing of the Maccabi Health Insurance Fund, also wrote to the director general of the Ministry of Finance, Ram Blinkov: The specials made it possible to continue to have departments in a professional manner. "
Dr. Kobi Habib, director of the Herzog Medical Center in Jerusalem, told Israel Today that "there is already a great challenge of serious illness, with the corona wards filling up at an accelerated pace and there is a deep shortage of medical staff."
"We have proven in the last two years that we are at the forefront of treating the most complex populations in the health system, and expect that the budgeting mechanisms will also be activated in the fifth wave of the Corona," said Ido Sharir, director of Reut Rehabilitation Hospital in Tel Aviv.
Boris Levin, CEO of the GoldenCare Geriatric Center chain, added: "The collapse of geriatric institutions will lead to the flooding of hospitals with serious patients and the collapse of the entire health care system, as has already happened in the first wave of corona in Italy and Spain."
The Ministry of Finance stated in response: "The ministry has invested NIS 29 billion in strengthening and preparing the health system for Corona.
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