The Ministry of Health has over recent months been leading a large-scale process of assessing the state of the health system in Israel in an effort to form the Ministry’s policy for dealing with it in the short and long term.
The process was carried out in collaboration with broad circles within the Ministry and various other stakeholders in the health system, and was accompanied by an external strategic consultancy company.
In the first stage of the process, the company’s consultants held numerous meetings with people representing the broad range of components of the health system: ministry officials past and present, HMO managers, hospital managers, the chairman of the Israel Medical Union, academics and representatives of the media specializing in health matters, and others.
All of these people were requested to point out the main challenges facing the health system and the goals that ought to guide its activities in the coming years.
In the second stage the findings were presented to the ministry administration and were discussed in depth. At the end of the debate, 7 multi-year goals were defined, reflecting the broad agreement of the ministry administration and the health system.
In the third stage the director general set up 7 implementation task forces, tasked with defining the problems in each of the areas, to form action plans for dealing with them, to define the targets and to break them down into actionable items for the ministry and into a work plan, as well as to define metrics for evaluating the plan’s success.
In the fourth stage the relevant plans were included in the 2011 work plans of the various administrations and departments in the ministry, in order for the ministry to begin implementing them.
The ministry administration is undertaking the challenge of leading the health system in the face of present-day challenges and future needs professionally and systematically, while maintaining broad-based cooperation with the many important entities working for the success of the state of Israel’s health system.
There is but one measure for our success – improving the state of the health of the people of Israel.
