60% of doctors punch time clocks for first time
LAST UPDATED: 02/02/2012 06:18
Hundreds of physicians have said they would refuse to comply, even though it could mean the loss of overtime payment.
Dr Chezy Levy punches time clock Photo: Barzilai Medical Center
Starting on Wednesday, the nation’s hospital doctors are required to punch time
clocks, or register their start and end of work, via a special cellular phone
program.
This implements a section of the Israel Medical Association
agreement with the government reached last August.
Earlier this week, the
Health Ministry issued instructions to all hospital directors that they
introduce work-monitoring systems.
The ministry said on Wednesday night
that 60 percent of government hospital doctors, and a similar rate in Clalit
Health Services hospitals, clocked in as required.
Reasons for refusal
include a “protest” against the requirement. “We hope that as time goes on, the
problems will be solved and disagreements settled,” the spokeswoman
said.
Hundreds of physicians have said they would refuse to comply, even
though it could mean the loss of overtime payment.
Punching time clocks
was a demand of the Treasury in reaching a deal following months of strikes and
sanctions in 2011.
Treasury officials suggested that during some of the
time that doctors were supposed to be in hospitals, they were off campus doing
private medical work.
Hundreds of doctors at the Rabin, Meir, Wolfson,
Rambam and Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Centers and other institutions have
reportedly decided not to cooperate because time-clock use for doctors was
“demeaning” and not suited to their profession.
Hospitals in Jerusalem,
where senior physicians are in hospitals for many long hours a day, because they
are allowed to give private medical services, have not announced what they would
do about time clocks.
Meanwhile, Dr. Chezy Levy, who until last week was
head of the Health Ministry’s medical administration and now is director-
general of Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center, replacing the retiring Dr. Shimon
Scherf, started work Wednesday by placing his employee card in the
machine.
Ilan Bombach, chairman of the Association for Medicine and Law,
said that doctors’ punching a time clock will produce the much-needed data on
how many hours a day doctors are at a patient’s disposal in public medical
institutions.
"There is no more efficient way to assess and manage
manpower than a time clock, and its introduction is a major positive change for
specialists, medical residents and patients," he said.