Hadassah doctors in row with U.S. benefactors over chief's resignation

Doctors at Hadassah University Hospitals have proposed that the Hadassah women's organization appoint a mediator in the disagreement between them and the organization over keeping the hospitals' director at his post.

The committee of senior physicians has informed staff members it intends to hold meetings during work hours to explain their position in support of Prof. Shlomo Mor-Yosef's continued service.

Nancy Falchuk, the president of Hadassah Women's Zionist Organization of America, which owns the hospitals in Ein Karem and on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem, arrived in Israel yesterday and is expected to meet with senior Hadassah doctors.

In recent weeks the doctors' and nurses' organizations have been organizing protests against the decision of the women's group not to extend Mor-Yosef's appointment at least until March 2012, the completion date of the new hospital tower at Ein Karem.

Mor-Yosef, 59, recently informed Hadassah's board that he intended to step down at the end of 2010 after 10 years at his post.

The chairman of Hadassah's department heads committee, Prof. Raphael Udassin, together with the chairman of the committee representing Hadassah's 250 senior physicians, Prof. Avinoam Reches, proposed a number of mediators, including former Jewish Agency director Sallai Meridor, former Tel Aviv University president and Israeli ambassador to the United States Itamar Rabinovich, and former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman.

The women's organization has not responded to the call to appoint a mediator.

A few days ago, the senior physicians' committee hired a PR firm, Shalom Tel Aviv, to help explain its position.

In a letter to hospital personnel, Udassin and Reches said they intend to change the policy of Hadassah doctors participating in donors' conventions and would work to change the structure of the board of directors, whose 15 members are mostly foreigners.

The committee also said it would hold meetings during work hours to explain its position and draft support.

Reches recently said the committee would delay its signature on renewal of economic recovery agreements with management of the women's group. As part of the agreements, Hadassah's senior physicians had loaned the hospital a percentage of their salaries during the global economic slump, which hit the women's organization especially hard.

The director of Loewenstein Hospital Rehabilitation Center, Prof. Jacob Hart, who is also chairman of the association of hospital directors, was one of four directors who met with the chair of Hadassah America's board last week in support of Mor-Yosef's continued service.

"Under the circumstances, no director of a serious hospital will submit candidacy for directorship of Hadassah, and we share the concerns of the doctors over the appointment of a new director who is not experienced enough," he told Haaretz.

According to Reches, who said the organization had not responded to the committee's appeals and was "humiliating" them, Mor-Yosef's departure is a "syndrome of the processes underway in the American Jewish community, which is changing, not for the better." He said losses Hadassah incurred in the Bernard Madoff affair and the economic crisis led to the current tensions. Reches also said hundreds of thousands of shekels raised by Hadassah's doctors have remained with the organization rather than going toward the hospital.

Sources in the Hadassah women's organization said the hospital's doctors help raise less than 10 percent of contributions, and that its leaders would not agree to appoint a mediator or extend Mor-Yosef's appointment.

Hadassah is expected to begin the search for a successor to Mor-Yosef shortly. The Hadassah women's organization said the conflict had caught them by surprise after the decision for Mor-Yosef to step down had been agreed upon. Mor-Yosef declined to be interviewed, as did Hadassah hospital management. No response was available from the Hadassah board by press time.