'Good management saves more lives than drugs' [p. 7]

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
The key to saving lives is not having advanced treatments but efficient and advanced health system management, says Prof. Alexander Aviram, scientific director of the National Institute of Health Services and Health Policy Research in Tel Hashomer. The institute is sponsoring a three-day international conference at Jerusalem's Binyenei Ha'uma starting Monday whose theme is: "Has the Era of Health Systems Reform Ended?" Aviram said most leaders of European and American health systems agree that improving the management, organization and quality of health services is more important for patients than any particular medical treatment, advanced as it may be. "It is important that resources are allocated in accordance with this [principle]," he said. Hundreds of senior health system decision-makers from Israel and around the world, including doctors, nurses, economists and social scientists, will attend, and Health Minister Ya'acov Ben-Yizri and Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski will greet them. The conference will be co-chaired by former Health Ministry director-general Prof. Mordechai Shani, head of the Gertner Research Institute at Sheba Medical Center and chairman of the public committee for expanding the basket of health services. The American co-chair will be Prof. Richard Saltman, a leading health policy and management expert at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta, who is also a visiting professor at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine.