Upper echelons change at Hadassah Medical Organization as labor talks on recovery plan dissolve

HMO Director-General Avigdor Kaplan names anesthesiologist Prof. Yoram Weiss to new post of “medical director" of the Ein Kerem hospital.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Prof. Yoram Weiss 370 (photo credit: Courtesy HMO. )
Prof. Yoram Weiss 370
(photo credit: Courtesy HMO. )
A few hours after financially troubled Hadassah Medical Organization’s director-general Avigdor Kaplan announced the appointment of a top administrator on Wednesday, negotiations between management and the works committee “exploded” in a severe dispute.
Dr. Yuval Weiss, an anesthesiologist by training, who has for several years been director-general of the Hadassah University Medical Center in Ein Kerem, was recently given the new title of deputy medical director of the Hadassah Medical Organization.
Now Kaplan has named another anesthesiologist, Prof. Yoram Weiss (not related to Yuval) to the new post of “medical director of the Ein Kerem hospital.”
A few days ago, Prof. Weiss – who has worked at Hadassah for 22 years but has not been a senior hospital administrator – resigned as head of the committee of Hadassah department heads, a position in which he represented senior Hadassah doctors in relation to management.
While the HMO spokeswoman said Dr. Yuval Weiss will have a higher position than Prof. Weiss, she did not explain the differences in his and Dr. Weiss’s responsibilities.
Meanwhile, Kaplan paid HMO’s 5,000 employees the second half of their wages for September only on Wednesday, after telling them late last month that he had enough money to pay only half of their salaries.
Kaplan, an insurance expert and HMO’s first director-general who is not a physician, said that Yoram Weiss’s appointment is “part of the reorganization that I have been advancing at Hadassah for the last few months. This process recognizes that modern and advanced management is one of the keys to success for the recovery program I am working on.”
Hadassah workers’ union chief Amnon Bruchian said that “our sincere efforts to reach a fair agreement that understands HMO’s situation and is concerned for the security of its workers have so far been fruitless.”
He charged HMO management with running negotiations “without good faith and trying to create various manipulations to harm the rights of the employees. It is clear that the only ones who will pay for the heavy price of recovery are the maintenance and administrative workers – and that top management has no intention of making changes high up.”
Bruchian said he and the Histadrut will apply to the Regional Labor Court for a discussion of the issues” and that the negotiations have been halted.