Waiting for the Professor

I said I’d expound on my experience of private medicine and, true to my word, here it is. The Herzliya Medical Center is very nicely appointed. The beds are actually comfortable with electric controls of the kind that have been standard in the US for the past 60 years. Compare this to the iron thing you had to pull with considerable might to raise the head in the Health Fund hospital and you can see why I was happy. The bathrooms are in the rooms, instead of the hall, and you have to share with only 2 other people. Best of all, the nurses were attentive, helpful and plentiful. In other words, the difference between socialized and private medicine is night and day.

The only frustration, and it was a big one, involved waiting for the doctor. I should have known this would be a sore point from the outset. When I went for my first consultation with him, a surgeon who held the exalted rank of professor, a title of which Israelis have a Teutonic awe, I arrived to find the tiny waiting room stuffed with people and the doctor nowhere to be found. He finally turned up about an hour later. I thought this was bad, but I didn’t know that this was the luckiest I would get with him.

When the day arrived for my operation, I got there a little bit earlier than my 3pm appointment, just to be sure that I wouldn’t keep the doctor and his scalpel waiting. The check-in went smoothly and then I was sent to the ward where everything ground to a halt. I was told to sit in the waiting room – this place was equipped with television monitors that gave patient status updates like the arrivals and departures on an airport display – where I waited. Then I waited some more. Then along about 5pm the elevator doors opened and in strolled the professor. He was just arriving! I continued to wait another hour and a half until someone came and fetched me.

Fast forward to the next day when I’m waiting to be released. Around about noon I got the bad news: the doctor won’t get there to make his rounds until 6 or 7pm. After alerting the media to get the message through to those standing by to pick me up, I settled in for a more or less comfortable wait. 6 o’clock came, 7 o’clock came and went. No professor. The guy finally turns up at 9pm. There was no point in being surly. I thanked him, took my paperwork and made a dash for freedom. The bottom line: the private Herzliya Medical Center is infinitely nicer and more comfortable than the socialist option. But unless you have the patience of Job, avoid the professors.

We Are Not Amused

My sister asks why I have not blogged about my recent 30-hour sojourn in the belly of socialized medicine. It’s a good question. The thing is, I’m not sure I can accurately describe the experience of a Middle Eastern hospital to her or anyone else who hasn’t experienced it firsthand.

To start with, there is no such thing as a semi-private room. I was in a new ward so there were only four beds to a room instead of six. The bed itself was reclaimed from a Nottingham dungeon, consisting of metal strips on a frame topped with a thin mattress filled with lumpy pellets. But even if it had been comfortable, which it wasn’t, it would have been like trying to sleep in a bus station, there being also no such things as visiting hours. Everybody’s whole clan comes meandering through at any old time.

Then there was that one of my roommates who did not stop talking. Ever. Yes, she even talked in her sleep. For the first twelve hours or so we heard in minute detail how she cooks kebab, how she makes humus, where to buy the best pita – all of this to a roomful of fasting people in surgical ward. Then we heard replayed conversations with her daughter on clothes, where to park the car, her uncle’s business dealings with… Here I punctured my own eardrums. At one point I opened my eyes to find her standing at the foot of my bed wanting to know what was wrong with me. “How did you get that? What have you been lifting? Don’t you take care of yourself?” Only in the Middle East could you be expected to justify your life to a total stranger.

All of this would have been worth it, albeit annoying, if I had been treated. But I wasn’t. After being given an injection in the emergency room to stop my screaming, I was transferred to the ward where I was dumped on a bed and left. Eight hours later, a doctor wandered by, pushed on my stomach and left. I saw only one nurse on the ward and nobody would give me any information. The next day I was blithely told that they had no time to fix my problem and were sending me home. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

But when the elevator doors opened on the ground floor I couldn’t believe what I saw: a mall! There were bookstores, drug stores, clothing stores, restaurants – civilization! There was even a MacDonald’s. Yes, MacDonald’s in a hospital. You can chow down on a Big Mac and then go right upstairs and take your chances on a triple bypass. It’s very efficient, probably the only thing in the place that is.

So you supporters of Obamacare, beware what you wish for. This is your future. Mine involves escaping to the Elysian Fields of private medicine where I expect to be treated like the Queen of England. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Two Hours in Limbo

The new administration in Washington is flirting with socialized medicine. I wish them luck. If my experience with Israel’s version of it is anything to go by, they’ll need it.

On Thursday I had an appointment at a local government hospital. This was lucky. If it had been at a Kupat Holim clinic it would have been canceled thanks to a strike. But at the government hospitals it was business-as-usual. I arrived on time for my 11:40 appointment, the sort of thing you would expect to be in-and-out in 10 minutes for, and sat and waited my turn. 2 hours. I waited for 2 hours.

It’s a huge amount of time. I could have watched a whole feature film in that time. Or 3 full episodes of “24”. Or run the 4-minute mile 30 times. Or eaten a plateful of lasagna, polished off a bottle of Chianti and still had time for the tiramisu. Instead, I sat helplessly watching the office door for any sign of life. Oh yes, I was patient. But as some dictionary somewhere defines it, patience is just a form of despair disguised as a minor virtue.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful to live in a society where I can get adequate medical care without having to rob a bank to pay for it. But the flip side is that you wait 2 months for any kind of test or procedure and then when the time has come and you have arrived with all the necessary forms and certificates, all signed, stamped and dated, you then must sit and wait. And wait. And wait.