Health Min. tells Hadassah Ein Karem: Fix serious failings, poor sanitation

Jerusalem's Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem, has been told by the Health Ministry to rectify a series of serious failings, including a shortage in anesthesiologists, faulty sterilization procedures for medical equipment and inadequate conditions.

The report, which was recently submitted to Professor Shlomo Mor Yosef, the head of the Hadassah Medical Organization, was made last February at the behest of the Health Ministry, by Dr. Yuval Weiss, now the hospital's director, and 22 hospital officials. One "serious finding," according to the report, related to conditions in operating rooms: Patients in the eye surgery room, which includes three separate operating tables, were wheeled in and out through the same room. At times, two patients were in that room at the same time, seriously increasing the chance of patients' infecting each other, a senior doctor told Haaretz.

The report said the number of workers in the hospital's Anesthesiology Department was "numerically adequate," but that occasionally no senior anesthesiologist was on duty. It added that the maternity ward lacked an anesthesiologist after 23:00. "There is a serious danger that anesthesiologists rushing from operation rooms to the maternity ward won't arrive on time for an emergency Cesarean section," the report stated. According to the report, the recovery room at Ein Karem is overfilled with patients and seriously understaffed. "Staff in the recovery room, which sometimes looks more like an emergency room, cannot treat patients with such serious ailments," the report says. The hospital's plan to redo the recovery room's services only in 2012 hurt the "patients' overall treatment array."

Air shortages

The report also noted serious shortages in oxygen and air supply in operating rooms. The backup oxygen system failed to meet set standards, and no periodic check of the oxygen tanks was done as stipulated by regulations. The hospital also lacked physiotherapists: Its eight physiotherapists are treating patients in 32 different departments. "The physiotherapy department is small, making adequate treatment difficult and many of the facilities need to be replaced," the report stated. "The quotas are insufficient even for a little hospital in the periphery. As a result, many of the treatments required by the maternity ward and oncological department cannot be given. Though the service is professional and modern, the physical conditions are poor and unacceptable. Most treatments were carried out in inadequate conditions by the patients' beds."

The dialysis unit, which treats 32 patients a day using 11 separate machines, is too small, the report said. "It is extremely cramped, failing to meet the required standards and resulted in a lack of privacy for patients who use the machine," according to the report. Patients' files were carelessly written, the report said: A summary of a child's hospitalization was illegibly written by a doctor; two nurses forgot to write what the patients had received treatment for; and an operation consent form was not filled in by either the doctor in charge or the patient. A spokeswoman for the hospital, Yael Bosem-Levi, told Haaretz in response that "the Hadassah management has constructive relations with the Health Ministry, and it will maintain them directly, and not through the media."

Israel's biggest

Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem, is the biggest hospital in Jerusalem. It has 40 departments, 742 beds and 26 operating tables. According to hospital data, in 2007 it treated 70,000 incidents and carried out 19,000 surgical operations. Of the 5,744 births at the hospital that year, only three babies died during birth, 14 were stillborn and five others died within a month of being born.