Senior doctors at Schneider Children's Medical Center have signed a petition to probe the conduct and function of the hospital's management and to replace its CEO.

This demand is echoed by Lynn Schneider, board chairman of Medical Development for Israel (MDI) - the organization set up to raise funds for and promote Schneider.

"We fear that if the hospital remains under its present management, this will damage its key position as a center of excellence and a symbol of Clalit's quality [Schneider belongs to the Clalit Health Maintenance Organization] ... we demand the immediate replacement of hospital director Professor Marc Mimouni to prevent the ongoing damage to the hospital's functioning," the doctors wrote in the petition.

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The petition, addressed to Clalit CEO Zeev Vurembrand, has not yet been sent to him, and its writers are hoping more senior doctors will sign it.

Haaretz has learned that MDI chair Lynn Schneider, daughter of Irving Schneider, whose NIS 60 million donation enabled building the hospital in 1991, recently told Vurembrand she was not pleased with Mimouni's performance. The appointment of the hospital's CEO and ward directors are subject to MDI's approval, according to the agreement signed between MDI and Clalit in 1987.

Mimouni, 64, was appointed in 2003 to direct Schneider for a four-year term, as is customary in the HMO's hospitals. At the end of that term, in August, Clalit's management is to discuss extending his appointment for another term. Before his present post, Mimouni directed Schneider's emergency room and day ward.

The doctors describe Mimouni's management style as a "reign of terror" over the staff. This atmosphere has caused severe damage to work relations with physicians and to the hospital's functioning. They list several failures as reflecting the situation - the failure to develop much-needed services for trauma and burn victims and the ongoing shortage in orthopedics, radiologists and other specialists, among other things, which requires sending patients to nearby Beilinson Hospital.

Professor Yehuda Danon, Schneider's founder and first CEO, told Haaretz that "under Mimouni's direction, the hospital is treading water and may even slide backward ... The main problem is in human relations ... the staff is afraid of the management, and that is a hindrance ... I fear for the hospital's status."

Danon recently retired from running the hospital's Department of Immunology and Allergy.

The problems at Schneider are not new to Vurembrand. In August of last year, he received a letter from a senior physician in Schneider with serious complaints against Mimouni. The doctor in question, who was under a disciplinary probe for not seeing five patients in his clinic, wrote that he had warned Schneider's management repeatedly that it was impossible to examine 30 patients within two hours. He said he had been assured the matter would be attended to but the hospital continued to schedule far too many patients for clinical examination.

"This incident reflects the general practice in Schneider... Israel's children's medicine flagship is run unprofessionally and negligently... regrettably those who pay for the failure are the patients and their relatives," he wrote.

He also told Vurembrand that at meetings of Schneider's surgical forum, which consists of 42 senior surgeons and anesthesiologists, many expressed lack of confidence in Mimouni and the hospital's management more than once. He asked Vurembrand to look into these matters and sent a copy of the letter to Health Minister Yaakov Ben-Yizri, his director general, Professor Avi Yisraeli, and to Clalit's internal comptroller.

Schneider's management commented that since Mimouni's appointment, he has given the hospital a momentum of activity - "an additional operating theater and burns unit have been opened, a branch of the hospital has been opened in Holon, another is to open in Ashdod and the hospital has undergone massive renovations."

Schneider's emergency room is the most crowded children's ER in the country, and Mimouni "has been acting to expand the ER and obtain more work positions. Recently Clalit's management approved some of his requests, and the plan is about to begin in a few months," the statement said.

The management refused to comment on "rumors of a petition that we have not received... The motives of the interested parties behind this petition should be looked into."

Clalit's management said Schneider is "a model for imitation both in Israel and the world.... Mimouni has advanced its professional management in quality, service and budget management indexes... the anonymous arguments raised in the media come from people who have been hurt by the director's management methods."