Health

Strengthening the public health system and increasing investment in it.

• •Changing the budget priority order and gradually raising national health spending, based on mapping needs and gaps relative to OECD countries.
• •Increasing the annual addition to the health basket in light of population growth and aging and entrenching it in a multi-year framework, to allow introducing new drugs, treatments and technologies without a renewed budget fight every year.
• •Strengthening multi-year national planning of manpower and infrastructure and effectively overseeing the health funds and the budgets directed to them, with emphasis on waiting times, service availability and geographic gaps.
• •Advancing the adoption of innovative technologies, increasing investment in research, reducing regulatory and bureaucratic barriers, strengthening innovation centers in hospitals and the community, and making health data accessible in a safe and responsible way by creating uniform infrastructure and rules for using data for research and development, with full protection of patients' privacy.

Closing the health gaps between the center and the periphery.

• •Place of residence or social affiliation will not determine the quality of care.
• •Strengthening the hospitals in the north, increasing the number of beds and expanding medical services.
• •Working to establish the new hospital in the Negev and securing the resources required for its establishment, and advancing the establishment of new hospitals in the north.
• •Opening regional specialist clinics while creating cooperation with advanced tertiary centers, expanding telemedicine and adding advanced medical equipment, including MRI and CT machines.
• •Operating a national program to bring specialist doctors to the north and south through a professional and family envelope: housing assistance, employment for spouses, internship tracks, research and development.
• •Also changing the incentives for the health funds, so that their funding reflects medical needs, distance and geographic sparseness and rewards proven improvement in service availability and quality.
• •Strengthening oversight of the health funds to ensure services and benefits are provided equally and according to medical need, and working to strengthen access to health services in Arab society and in areas where the supply of services is currently limited, so that every citizen can receive quality, available medical service close to home.
• •Preserving the health system as a central space of partnership in Israeli society.
• •Expanding national-civil service tracks within the health system, and connecting them to continuing training and employment tracks in the system.

Leading a national mental health program.

• •Establishing a national headquarters for mental rehabilitation and recovery, with inter-ministerial authority, which will coordinate the work of the health, defense, welfare and education ministries, National Insurance, the health funds and local authorities.
• •The headquarters will set national goals, regulate responsibility, map needs and services and oversee waiting times and the quality of the response.
• •Establishing a national system for early identification and proactive outreach, with emphasis on at-risk populations.
• •Strengthening resilience systems in the authorities and the psychological-educational service, and training family doctors, education and care staff to identify distress and suicidality and refer to treatment.
• •Significantly increasing public investment in mental health, adding positions and expanding the training of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and the other care professions, and working for recognition of professions not yet recognized under the law, such as arts therapists, to allow their inclusion in the services basket.
• •Building a graduated continuum of responses: from guided self-help, community and group responses, individual treatment in the community, up to intensive rehabilitation.
• •Developing hospitalization alternatives such as day frameworks and balancing homes, and also strengthening the hospitalization system as a system whose role is to stabilize the person and return them to the community quickly, with as few restrictions as possible.

Strengthening the medical teams and increasing manpower.

• •Increasing the number of medical students to more than 2,000 a year alongside the necessary increase in positions across the system, in hospitals and in the community, and expanding the training and internship infrastructure, especially in the periphery and the community.
• •Establishing a national, fair and transparent mechanism for accepting interns to residency and creating incentives for residency in needed professions and in the periphery.
• •Reducing interns' load and burnout and advancing a feasible outline for shortening shifts.
• •Increasing the number of nurses and ensuring that specialist nurses receive more clinical authority, and working for professional regulation, together with professionals, of the role of nursing assistant, to allow a faster professional response and free doctors to treat complex cases.
• •Establishing a dedicated unit to bring back Israeli doctors who work outside Israel, which will keep continuous contact with Israeli doctors abroad and help create a clear professional horizon for returning to Israel.
• •At the same time, creating in Israel the conditions that will let doctors return and stay.
• •Strengthening the technological, professional and research capabilities of hospitals outside the center too, so that doctors returning with advanced expertise can integrate and apply it in all parts of the country.
• •Alongside the professional horizon, also creating a suitable envelope for the doctor and their family, with the understanding that a decision to return to Israel is the decision of a whole family.

Investing in preventive medicine and preparing for population aging.

• •Returning public health to the center: expanding the well-baby clinic services, vaccinations and screening tests, and fixing the gaps created following the reform of the child development centers.
• •Building, together with the health funds, a five-year plan for investing in preventive medicine in all its components.
• •Promoting a healthy lifestyle together with the education system and local authorities, and strengthening the fight against smoking, obesity and chronic diseases.
• •Investing especially in populations and areas where health indicators are low, with measurable targets for narrowing gaps.
• •Preparing the system for population aging by strengthening medicine for the elderly in the community.
• •Rewarding the health funds for preventing functional decline and connecting the health system, local authorities and community services, to reach the older person before they reach the hospital.
• •Expanding the active geriatrics, rehabilitation and home-hospitalization system, so that more older people can receive quality care at home and in the community instead of remaining in the corridors of the internal-medicine wards.
• •Advancing a state long-term-care insurance law that will reorganize the fragmented system and ensure every person a proper response according to their needs, regardless of their economic ability.