Sicko – My Small Israeli Experience
2007-06-23 by Yohay
Unfortunately, I had spent many hours this week in the hospital accompanying a friend who is hospitalized. All in all, the “Tel Aviv Medical Center”, (aka Ichilov hospital) is ok.
The trouble is in the most important place – the emergency room. It’s a zoo! It took 16 hours to get out of there. The destination wasn’t home. It was moving to a department in the hospital. I think that spending 16 hours in the ER is way too much. The place was overcrowded and noisy.Without running after the doctors, nurses and secretaries, I think that it would have taken much longer.
I don’t know if the government is to blame because of constantly cutting the budgets. Maybe it’s the reputable hospital that just mismanages the ER, or a very unlucky day. According to other experienced people, this was not an unlucky day. Just a normal day there.
Is it the same in all emergency rooms? I hope not…
7 Responses to “Sicko – My Small Israeli Experience”
I’ve only been to the ER once in my life – Meir hospital in Kfar Saba (after my stooopid motorcycle accident). It didn’t take 16 hours, but it was a hellishly long wait.
If I recall correctly, we waited about 45 minutes to see a doctor, another 30~ mins for the x-ray, another 30 mins for the doctor again, and then another 30 mins to get another x-ray (after it turned out that my x-ray was borked and the technician didn’t notice it in the first place), and back to waiting for the doctor (who said my shoulder was broken and gave me a crappy sling). and then, of course, another 45 mins to get discharged.
Watched Sicko last night. Scary stuff. Even scarier how close we are to becoming as bad as the US when it comes to healthcare.
Well, in my last case, every waiting time between the different stages took somewhere between 1 to 3 hours. You had better luck.
Haven’t seen it yet. I liked Fahrenheit 9/11, so expectations are high. At least here in Israel, you probably won’t be thrown out of the hospital if you don’t have insurance (I hope).
The rule in ER’s is simple: unless you come in holding your severed head under your arm, they pretty much don’t care. I’ve been to the ER several times myself, and it’s never been that much of a zoo as you describe, but it’s very true that you have no choice but to chase around the doctors and the nurses, or you’ll get no answers and will be stuck there for days.
Well, I guess that my case was very unlucky…
Hey,
I read your blog from time to time.
My folks were visiting me here in Tel Aviv, and my Dad fell on one of the concrete piers at Sheraton Beach and his wrist swoll up badly.
So the next day we off we went to Ikhilov Hospital with the full expectation that we would be there at least 12 hours , as this would be an average duration of an A&E (ER) visit in Ireland. We were amazed at how organised the whole ER was … sure there were some old people waiting on trolley beds and some young people had been waiting an hour or two for an initial examination … but it was nowhere near as bad as in Ireland where if your injury is not life threatening, you can end up waiting 12 hours or more, just to start treatment in the A&E. To our surprise my father was assessed, X-Rayed, Diagnosed, and bandaged up all within 3 hours for about NIS 800.00 (the full price of the treatment, which he would reclaim from their private health insurance back in Ireland).
Maybe we got lucky, and my parents got the “tourist treatment”
I was amazed at this, my parents were amazed and were telling their friends back in Ireland how efficient the hospital was ….
Anyway, just wanted to point out one of the pluses of living in Israel, cos many times Western immigrants only speak out about the negatives (drivers, customer service, the “neighbours” … LOL)
Paul, thanks for sharing your positive experience. 12 hours of waiting for an initial treatment is much worse that my recent visit to the hospital.
I thought that Ireland had modern health system. Now I know that Ireland is similar to the UK also in the health care system.
Yup, there are a few pluses here. Compared to Europe, the sun is here is a very big plus…
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