If one can judge the measure of a hospital by its leadership, Kaplan Medical Center stands apart. Both its CEO, Prof. Tarif Bader, and its Deputy Director, Dr. Alex Tiktinsky, have had extensive experience in the IDF, come from disparate geographical and cultural worlds – Bader is a Druze from Israel’s north, and Tiktinsky hails from Ukraine – and work harmoniously to lead the hospital, whose geographical area includes more than one million Israelis.
Bader served in the IDF for almost three decades, serving as IDF Surgeon General from 2017 to 2020. He led numerous Israeli international medical missions, including treating wounded Syrians during the Syrian civil war, commanding the Israeli field hospital in Nepal following the 2015 earthquake, and heading the pediatric department of Israel’s field hospital in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. He currently holds the rank of Brigadier General (res.) and lives in the northern Galilee town of Hurfeish, located between Nahariya and Safed.
Tiktinsky received his medical training in Ukraine. After making aliyah in 1998 and passing the government medical certification exams, he enlisted in the IDF and served in a variety of capacities, including battalion physician and divisional physician. He headed the IDF Health and Medical Services unit and also served as head of the Israeli field hospital in Japan following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Today, Kaplan Medical Center is pursuing a major expansion of its campus—strengthening its protective infrastructure in the event of attack, while adding new buildings and modernizing existing facilities.
Though Kaplan may not be as well-known as hospitals in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, it has a large regional footprint, from Rishon LeZion and Modi’in in the north down to Ashdod and Kiryat Gat in the south. It is just 40 kilometers from the Gaza Strip, and on October 7, more than one hundred wounded from the Hamas attacks were transferred to Kaplan and treated here.
Recalling that difficult day, Bader says that the biggest challenge he faced was dealing with the uncertainty of the situation. “On October 7,” he explains, “the biggest challenge was functioning effectively in a situation of complete uncertainty. In other circumstances, such as an escalation in the south or a war with Lebanon, we have some idea of what to expect. On October 7, we very quickly understood just how much we did not understand about what was happening on the ground. That was the greatest challenge: how to explain to our team what they should be preparing for.”
Bader says his IDF experience served him well on that day. “There are three things I learned from the international IDF missions I led. “First, one must have the ability to organize very quickly to build something that fits a new reality. Second, even in emergencies, we must take care of our team. Third, one must be able to function in a period of uncertainty. That third element—knowing how to operate under uncertainty—was especially clear when I commanded a delegation to Nepal. I arrived there not knowing what was happening, not knowing how many injured there were, and we had to adapt to that reality. You have to be prepared for anything—from someone pulled out of the rubble, to a severe head injury, to a premature baby who has just been born and needs care.”
Tiktinsky, who holds the rank of Lieutenant Colonel (res.), says that his IDF experience has been extremely valuable in organizing the hospital and building effective processes for transitioning from routine to emergency operations. There is a subtle difference between military command and hospital operations. “In a hospital setting, you can’t simply give orders—you need to motivate and bring people with you. There’s a fundamental difference between commanding and managing. That’s something both Tarif and I learned early in our careers, and it continues to guide us today in hospital leadership. In many ways, the underlying work processes are quite similar across organizations, but applying them in a civilian medical environment requires a different kind of leadership approach.”
Transitioning from everyday hospital activity to full emergency mode, he explains, doesn’t begin when a crisis occurs—it starts long before. “We carry out a wide range of activities daily, designed to prepare the hospital for emergency scenarios. These include mass-casualty drills, departmental evacuations, fire-response exercises, established operational protocols, communications checks, dry runs, and preparations for potential cyber incidents within the hospital. All of these processes are conducted in a highly systematic way throughout the entire year. When an actual event occurs, we activate the operational frameworks and procedures we have already put in place.”
Tiktinsky adds that protocols are constantly updated and modified when circumstances change. For example, Kaplan Medical Center is located just 40 kilometers from the Gaza Strip. As such, over the years, the hospital was designed to withstand rocket fire from Gaza, which was typically launched with relatively smaller payloads. Accordingly, the protection policies differed significantly.
“In coordination with Israel’s Home Front Command and the Ministry of Health,” he explains, “we were required to evacuate the upper two floors. Patients could remain in certain designated areas, but many had to be moved to more protected zones. In some cases, even stairwells were designated as protected areas, and specific sections of the hospital were classified as safe zones against rocket fire from Gaza.”
However, after Iran launched a ballistic missile that struck Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba on June 19, 2025, which caused extensive damage and destroyed several wards, Kaplan staff had to rethink how it dealt with operations.
When Operation Roaring Lion – the US-Israel attack on Iran – began at the end of February, Building A, one of the hospital’s older structures, was completely evacuated. In addition, the hospital established a dedicated, fortified unit for ventilated patients—relocating them to a protected area that normally serves as a pediatric day-care ward, and expanding it into a fully operational 14-bed emergency unit.
Kaplan Medical Center reassigned all available protected spaces throughout the hospital, changed their designated uses, and increased the number of fully protected beds to 145, meeting Ministry of Health standards. In addition, the overall capacity was expanded to approximately 250 protected or semi-protected beds, thereby providing safe care for all hospitalized patients.
In addition, the hospital expanded its platforms for delivering digital health care remotely. “Each day,” says Tiktinsky, “we conducted hundreds of virtual consultations across a wide range of specialties, providing remote care to patients. This has had a significant impact on maintaining continuity of care, ensuring that patients continued to receive treatment even under emergency conditions.”
How has the staff at Kaplan ensured that the right patient receives the right care during wartime? In a short conflict, the long-term impact is relatively limited. But in a prolonged war, the challenge becomes far more complex. To address this, Kaplan established an emergency committee that reviewed all cases, compiled patient lists, and determined clinical priorities for patients awaiting treatment or surgery.
Before implementing the committee, Kaplan established a hospital ethics committee because, in practice, these decisions involve a form of triage—determining, for example, whether the needs of a patient with carotid artery disease are more or less urgent than those of a patient with pancreatic cancer or a woman with cervical cancer. These are not only clinical decisions, but deeply ethical ones.
Another issue the ethics committee addressed was its discharge policy from the emergency department. Across the hospital—and, in fact, across Israel— during the war, there was a clear effort to discharge patients to the community as quickly as possible, and to minimize admissions. This was necessary because hospital bed capacity during wartime drops to roughly 40% of normal levels.
Beyond day-to-day management, Bader explains that hospital heads need to maintain resilience among both patients and staff. “We had to focus on emergency preparedness—readiness for mass-casualty events, inventories, what’s lacking and what isn’t, what resources I have, staffing shortages, things like that. But our most important challenge has always been keeping our patients in mind as well and maintaining constant attention to what they are experiencing. One of my roles as a manager—not just mine, but also that of mid-level managers—is to walk through the departments, speak with people, and identify points of strain—early signs of crisis among staff.”
“At the end of the day, our most valuable resource is our people—our workforce—and we have to protect that at all times. We talk to people, see if they’re missing anything, try to support them in terms of staffing and reinforcements, and sometimes even provide small material gestures—invite them for a cup of coffee and cake, bring in pizza —do all these things that may seem simple but are important, to show them: we see you, and you are part of this—you are truly our most valuable asset.”
Bader says that Kaplan is developing new initiatives designed to expand the protective space within the hospital. “One of the key initiatives currently we are considering is the construction of a new building on the hospital campus that will address existing gaps—both in inpatient departments, intensive care, emergency rooms, and operating theaters—and will ensure that in future conflicts there will be protected space for Kaplan’s patients.”
Of Kaplan’s fifteen operating rooms, only five are fully protected. To address this shortcoming, the hospital has developed a plan to upgrade and fortify additional operating rooms. This upgrade will not only expand Kaplan’s surgical capabilities in protected areas, but also enable the relocation of additional procedures—such as gastroscopies, colonoscopies, and pulmonary institute services—into protected spaces.
In addition, the hospital is considering three smaller projects. One will convert an underground space into a protected ward of close to 30 beds. In addition, a shelter area was renovated and turned into an inpatient ward. As part of the planned renovation of the operating rooms next year, Kaplan will also incorporate protective infrastructure so that operations can continue even during emergencies.
Amos Shavit, who heads the Friends of Kaplan Medical Center organization, adds that the hospital has additional projects in the planning stages, including an advanced rehabilitation center at the neighboring Herzfeld geriatric hospital, support for the mental health center for post-trauma treatment, establishment of a new pediatric clinic, and creation of a child development center. “Friends of Kaplan Medical Center,” he notes, “serves as an essential complement to the hospital’s needs—enabling us to implement our strategic vision and long-term development plan. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to move forward.”
Bader will be in New York for the Jerusalem Post Conference on June 1 and will be speaking to conference participants about Kaplan Medical Center and its future. “Kaplan Medical Center has remarkable capabilities. It is a significant anchor—not only for its immediate geographic area, but also for strengthening national resilience. Our ability to develop and build additional facilities—more buildings, better protection, and new technologies—is often constrained primarily by funding and costs. We are looking for partners to help with the work here so we can continue to strengthen, build, and advance the hospital.
“Kaplan will continue to be a center of excellence—one that attracts not only the million residents in its immediate area, but also people from the north and the south, who come because they believe in the capabilities we have here, in our people, and in our ability to provide the most professional care possible. That is our goal. To reach our goal, we must continue recruiting highly skilled and professional staff, adopt and acquire advanced technologies—such as robotics, medical equipment, CT, MRI, PET-CT, and more—and improve the hospital’s infrastructure. High-quality care rests on the strength of three pillars: personnel, technology, and infrastructure.”
This article was written in cooperation with Kaplan Medical Center of Clalit Health Services, the largest health organization in Israel, running 14 hospitals across the country alongside 1600 community clinics.