IMA marks centennial with appointment of external advisory

Retired justice Dalia Dorner will head the public committee, which will make recommendations to be presented at its 42nd convention.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Dalia Dorner (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Dalia Dorner
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
The Israel Medical Association (IMA), which will soon celebrate its 100th anniversary, has appointed a former Supreme Court justice to head a committee that will examine the nationwide organization of physicians and suggest new ways to achieve its aims.
Retired justice Dalia Dorner, who is currently chairman of the Israel Press Council, will head the public committee, which will make recommendations to be presented at its 42nd convention. Other members are medical Prof. Shaul Shasha and economist and former senior Treasury official David Boaz.
The IMA has served for decades as a labor union for doctors in the public sector (and some in the private sector who joined voluntarily), an ethics bureau as well as a lobby for healthcare issues.
IMA chairman Dr. Leonid Eidelman said that that the three targets it set a century ago are still relevant – forwarding the professional, scientific and economic interests of its members; advancing the high professional and ethical level of the profession; and promoting the status of the physician and public medicine in the country.
“To continue to promote these aims to a maximum degree, the IMA checks itself from time to time. The organization’s 100th anniversary is the proper opportunity for a reexamination by an external committee of how it carries out its aims,” said Eidelman.
The committee’s appointment letter states that it should examine and make recommendations on the IMA’s code; the way in which decisions are made and organizational processes; the connection with members and any other subject that needs to be discussed.
Eidelman continued that the committee’s assignment includes interviewing any physician who wants to speak and has presented his position in writing. The committee will consider every request and decide whether to invite the author or send a written response. The first meeting will be held next week.