While hospitals across the country were experiencing a severe shortage of beds, the director of the Scottish Hospital in Nazareth, Prof. Fahed Hakim, noted that due to a lack of approval from the Ministry of Health, a new intensive care unit set up at the medical institution was empty.
"We built a glorious ward with 12 beds, we recruited a medical staff but I do not have a license from the Ministry of Health to operate it," said Prof. Hakim at a discussion of the health committee on the state of intensive care units in Israel.
"It can not be that they give me permission to build and not operate. Recruiting doctors and nurses in a hospital in the periphery is not a game. They are currently sitting and sitting in other wards."
The discussion, initiated by MKs Yael Ron Ben Moshe and Osama Saadi, was also attended by Nadav Ben Yosef, director of the Public Hospitals' Control Division at the Ministry of Health.
In response to the director of the hospital in Nazareth, Ben Yosef said: "Currently every year the Ministry of Finance budgets a distribution of 200 beds for all hospitals. The bed plan for 2022 has already been closed and all beds have been distributed. When the next plan arrives we can decide again ".
According to Dr. Vered Ezra, head of the medical division at the Ministry of Health, the hospital in Nazareth is currently operating several intensive care beds with approval. "It is not just the Ministry of Health's opinion," she stressed. "It has been approved and there is future planning, so that we can use the same prepared infrastructure in the not too distant future."
In light of this, the Knesset members requested the Ministry of Health's reference and demanded that the approval for the operation of the department be expedited.
"If he deserves this license, it should be granted now, not in a year," said former Health Minister MK Yaakov Litzman.
The discussion in the Health Committee, today, Photo: Knesset Spokeswoman, Danny Shem Tov
During the discussion, which presented data on occupancy in intensive care units in hospitals, MK Ron Ben Moshe said that "we are witnessing a very severe shortage of beds in intensive care units across the country, and I want to put a spotlight on hospitals in the periphery - northern and southern.
"Bringing a doctor to an intensive care unit at a hospital in Safed, Nahariya, Ashkelon or Eilat is an even more complex task, and we need to think of creative and unique solutions to it. We need to look at what was done, what worked and did not work." "To a certain extent, but once they started massaging it, it took out a large part of the sting. We also need to take care of the same doctor's family so that the change is sustainable and that we can thicken the ranks in remote hospitals as well."
According to her, MK Saadi joined: "In all the hospitals in the country today there are only about 400 beds and we need at least a thousand.
In the last seven years, instead of building more intensive care units, only 36 beds have been added, of which ten beds were added following the opening of Assuta Hospital in Ashdod.
"In terms of medical staff, there are a total of 116 intensive care specialists in Israel and 39 interns, when the need is at least 250. These data are very difficult and worrying, and if left untreated, the problem will only get worse over the years."
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