Last week my 86 years old mother fell. It was a long journey until she got a treatment.
First, she called the Home care. He gave her an injection, but the next day the pain augmented, so she went to her Orthopedic physician. He referred her to X-ray. Then, to the ER. She waited 6 hours in the ER, until the resident physician on duty decided she does not know what to do with her, did not want to call the "on guard" specialist and sent her home with an invitation to consultation 5 days after. When we came to the consultation, the specialist diagnosed that she broke her shoulder and dislocated it. He was amazed she did not get any treatment the day she came to the ER. The bones started to heel, and now she needed to be anesthetized in order to rebuild the shoulder. She became so anxious that her blood pressure jumped to 220 and they were afraid to anaesthetize her.
Finally she went through the procedure. She suffered and suffers a lot of pain.
I now ask myself if the system is correct. How can a hospital be run during the night without specialists? How can we depend during 16 hours on the residents only?
Here in Israel the physicians in the public system are very poorly paid. That id why, they give the minimum to the Hospital and save their energy to their private practice.
Although 100% of the population in Israel have Health Insurance, which is a very important law, the budgets do not catch the gap on increasing costs. Therefore, the Health system is deteriorating and needs a fundamental change.
