Complaint: "health care system is not adapted to the general population"

In a letter sent to the Ministry of Health by the organization Adalah and other organizations applicants complain that Greater Common health institutions do not meet the Ministry of Health circular on linguistic accessibility. Arab women and the elderly, Ethiopian and Russian speakers who are not fluent in Hebrew now have to use the translation of family members, some of them minors, in order to obtain information about the medical care they need."

And this is the language of their appeal:

"In February 2013 went into effect Ministry of Health circular, requiring HMOs and hospitals to provide health care measures to adapt the general population in Israel, reducing discrimination and gaps in providing health services among these groups. Adalah's appeal, the Forum for the families of immigrants, Public Trust, and Tebeka to 40 managers of hospitals and health institutions, organizations is protesting the non-existence of the circular and organizations want to know what actions is part of the implementation CEO circular, large parts of which are anchored in the various laws, including patient rights law.

"It should be noted that the CEO circular requires all healthcare organizations to take a series of steps, including: oral translation when visiting a patient in the clinic / hospital, medical document translation, procedures, forms, signage and websites and translation services provided through the phone into different languages. Addition to the repeats requires the CEO to guide the medical staff and administrators in hospitals and clinics on cultural competency.

Moreover the organizations point out in their letter that the healthcare system is not prepared to service the population into different groups according to their language and their cultural needs as required. Many patients, especially from groups that do not speak Hebrew, such as the Bedouin Arab women, elderly immigrants from the former USSR and Ethiopian adults cannot get medical care or transfer their complaints to doctors accurately reflecting their distress and medical condition. For this purpose they are forced to seek the assistance of family members, often minors,

friends and bystanders who are not eligible in providing professional translation. This causes many patients to feel embarrassed and humiliated in light of the exposure of personal medical information, and is against the law of patient rights. These patients also often stamped "informed consent forms" in Hebrew without understanding the nature of the written form.

Signed by Attorney Sawsan Zaher of Adalah, Ronen Regev Kabir Public Trust, Tali Dajan organization Tebeka and Marina Zemski Forum for immigrant families.

Ministry of Health: There is a real change

Detailed response of the Health Ministry spokeswoman of what are the existing procedures in the field, and how they are being implemented.

"Ministry of Health circular on adjustment and cultural accessibility, which came out in February 2011, gradually implemented in different organizations in numerous health areas. The circular states that the deadline to implementation of full corporate plan is two years from the date of publication.

"Since the publication of the circular, the health system went into the process of significant change and moving towards realizing the target of accessibility. It is worth noting that for most institutions it is a complex process and innovative, and that the transition effort requires an investment of effort and resources of all healthcare organizations, as well as the time frame for learning and adaptation.

"Examples of activities undertaken by healthcare organizations to implement this circular:
"HMOs - controls conducted so far funds, indicate that, because the funds were significant processes promote the subject of accessibility. Among the activities conducted can be found on the add significant translation of documents of various information for patients, including health information and information about rights; adding signage languages; strengthening collaborative work with local religious leadership; Enhancing multilingual personnel, conducting workshops and language therapy patient groups; editing intervention programs tailored language and culture; Translation and Web sites.

"Hospitals - Many hospitals have started various activities in the circular CEO, for example: installing signage multi - lingual, cultural accessibility is responsible for the appointment, establishing committees accessibility issue bonds collecting information on linguistic features of the patients, identification of intervention areas and needs of patients different cultural groups; posting health information and patient rights information in multiple languages, providing translation services by staff; translation websites of hospitals and the like.

"In summary, the Health Ministry on activities brought about real change in the health system for all those populations who required linguistic and cultural accessibility. We continue to track the deployment of all refillable health system and application testing actuators and controls."

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!