Following the failure in IVF treatments at Assuta Rishon LeZion and Assuta Ramat HaHayal, the Ministry of Health recommends limiting the number of treatment cycles in each IVF unit to no more than 8000,11. The ministry also recommends allowing patients to choose their physician in public medicine, a step that may reduce the burden on private medicine.
One of the findings that emerged from the Ministry of Health's examination of the two malfunctions at Assuta was the heavy load on the units. At Assuta Ramat Hachayal, about 10,<> treatment cycles were performed annually and at Assuta Rishon LeZion about <>,<>, some of the treatments were performed until the wee hours of the night.
Assuta Hospital in Rishon LeZion. Difficult findings, photo: Coco
According to the data presented to the team, in recent years there has been a sharp increase in the number of IVF treatments in Israel performed in privately owned medical institutions.
In 2021, 60% of IVF cycles (36408) were performed in private hospitals and 23,710 were performed in about 20 units in public hospitals.
This increase has raised the need to increase the maintenance of quality and safety of care.
The team conducted an examination of the structure of the system in order to identify structural, economic and other failures that may lead to malfunctions.
The team mapped problems on several key levels, including market conditions that create a shift of activity to private units and an increase in workloads in these units. Some units and laboratories operate inappropriately. In addition, in the absence of planning, most services in the central region were concentrated in two central private institutions, creating significant inequality in the availability of services in the rest of the country.
Centrifuge used in the process towards IVF, Photo: GettyImages
The team recommends that the choice of attending physician be allowed, at no additional cost, in public hospitals as well, so that public units will become more attractive, as well as strengthening availability and improving the quality of service in public hospitals through a patient satisfaction survey in the units.
Another recommendation is to define a maximum scope of activity – up to 8000,<> treatment cycles. This is in contrast to the current situation in which there is a huge scope of activity in Assuta's hospitals. "While monitoring the gradual increase in capacity in other units in a way that does not create operational problems or long queues."
To this end, the Director General of the Ministry of Health contacted public hospitals about a month and a half ago and asked them to examine the possibility of increasing the number of IVF patients with them.
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Another recommendation is to improve the standard of operation of units and laboratories with an emphasis on quality of care and safety, adding advanced computer systems to prevent errors in identification and improving monitoring of samples.
This was after it was found that handwritten records were managed at Assuta Rishon and at Assuta Ramat Hachayal acted only after the malfunction in the first to introduce a computerized system to prevent mistakes in identification.
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