Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, many discussions have been held across the globe about how the field of healthcare (and life in general) has changed forever, and about the need to relearn how to treat patients in a new world with such a deceptive, elusive and deadly virus.
And yet, as it pertains to one key aspect, Health Ministry leaders in Israel continue to operate as if we're living in a world with no coronavirus. They have tried, and too many times have failed, to cover up, blur, underplay and evade serious inquiries pertaining to the quality of care in Israel and complaints about deficiencies, failures, corruption and malpractice in hospitals and clinics around the country.
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The centrality of the coronavirus in our daily lives goes without saying; the basic health, economic and social dread casting a dark cloud over the planet, and the public's and media's attention focused almost entirely on the pandemic. Yet despite all this, Health Ministry Director-General Prof. Hezi Levi recently ordered the formation of a committee of inquiry to examine the quality of healthcare for corona patients (a very important and positive step). In the same breath, however, he had the gumption to declare, in an outrageous decision, that all the materials used for the inquiry, all the previous investigations and studies, will be confidential and classified from the public and will even be completely withheld from the 30,000 corona patients who have thus far been hospitalized and their families.
On Wednesday, one hospital chief explained that the decision to keep the findings a secret was meant to facilitate the investigation in the first place, and that if non-disclosure wasn't assured the hospitals and doctors' unions in Israel would have actively boycotted the investigation or hindered it. This explanation reflects the approach prevalent throughout much of the Israeli healthcare system, which for many years has been accustomed to whitewashing inquiries of this sort and still hasn't changed at all, even during this pandemic.
The Health Ministry's attempt to conceal the inquiry's findings from the public is actually even more sophisticated because it rests on the patient's legal right to confidentiality, which indeed allows for the formation of a discrete "oversight and quality-control committee" for the purpose of improving medical treatment. But the question regarding Levi's disgraceful decision is not about the explanation and the legal reasoning his employees at the Health Ministry managed to come up with – it is about how the ministry failed to understand that such a decision is a death blow to the tens of thousands of corona patients and their families, who have a legal and civil right to know how and why they or their loved ones were treated in a certain manner. It is also a severe blow to the public's faith and trust in the healthcare system as a whole as far as its handling of the worst health crisis in over 100 years.
And how can we trust the Health Ministry not to whitewash investigations it is hiding from us after Israel Hayom, in early July and this week, revealed a series of appalling complaints by doctors themselves, including the director of the intensive care unit and nine doctors from the corona ward at state-run Wolfson Medical Center, about the treatment corona patients are receiving.
The doctors said that critically ill patients on respirators had died due to serious mistakes and unforgivable neglect (all the allegations were rejected and denied by the hospital board). And what has the Health Ministry done until now when faced with extraordinary allegations from courageous doctors who work at a hospital the ministry itself is in charge of running? Shamefully, the ministry's directorship has consistently and doggedly dodged comment, effectively sending the message that although the virus is ravaging the lives of many Israelis, it hasn't changed the Health Ministry's leaders or their penchant for apathy, suppression and elusiveness.
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