You need to read what Health Ministry Director-General Professor Roni Gamzo said on Monday at least two or three times to believe it.
Gamzo honestly and courageously admitted that his office had thoroughly failed to implement any significant system of oversight on Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, before it could amass the enormous debt of 1.3 billion shekels ($370 million) and find itself on the verge of collapse and closure.
In an emergency meeting of the Knesset's Labor, Welfare and Health Committee, Gamzo told Hadassah's representatives: "You wanted privatized medical care; you wanted us not to supervise you. When it's convenient you are a private hospital and when it isn't convenient you come to us. Where was Hadassah two years ago when the debt started ballooning? When I asked for the privatized medical care figures they were hidden. We never received financial reports."
Gamzo responded to a question from MK Shelly Yachimovich (Labor) by saying that the government-run hospitals owned by the state and under the supervision of the Health and Finance ministries are managed better and much more efficiently than Hadassah. He added, quite correctly, that he would like to see the hospital transferred to the purview and ownership of the state, which would finally allow -- for the first time since the establishment of the state -- for real and significant supervisory methods to be installed there.
It is also important to note that the Health Ministry, for its part, never tried enforcing, even when the need presented itself, any type of meaningful oversight of the hospital's affairs. Even after very harsh complaints were publicly aired this past year about the management of the privatized medical care system at Hadassah (which allows the patient to choose his or her doctor and reduce waiting time at an additional cost), and after criticism was voiced to this effect by State Comptroller Yosef Shapira -- Gamzo and Health Minister Yael German failed to act and implement a mechanism of oversight at Hadassah.
From this point forward, the hospital's failure to manage itself cannot be separated from the Health Ministry's severe negligence in performing its required supervisory duties over one of the biggest hospitals in Israel.
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