Gabriel Barbash, the longtime director-general of the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, recently made his first visit to the Bay Area to tell American Jews more about his hospital.
Such as the fact that it exists.
Founded in 1963, the government-supported medical center may not have the world-famous Chagall stained-glass windows of Hadassah University Medical Center or the storied 110-year history of Shaare Zedek Medical Center, both in Jerusalem.
But as one of the largest medical centers in the country, it does have 170 outpatient clinics, 1,300 beds, 1,250 doctors and a reputation as one of the most requested facilities for new doctors applying for residencies.
Barbash, a cardiologist by training, acknowledges that the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center is Israel’s No. 1 hospital nobody knows about.
Explaining its low profile in the United States, Barbash says, “We do not have [supporting] groups spread across America like Hadassah Hospital.”
However, the center’s visibility may increase as a result of Barbash’s tour of the Silicon Valley high-tech and biotech community earlier this month, during which he sought funding for a new neuroscience institute.
Joining him was biologist Karin Weiner Lachmi, an Israeli-born resident of Los Altos who serves as the hospital’s Northern California development director. She is helping to raise money to build the $70 million neuroscience facility.
“Because I live here and have kids at the Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School and a daughter at the JCC, I’m well connected to the Jewish and Israeli community,” Lachmi says. “Many Americans don’t know about this amazing place. I want to educate people and help them get to know it.”
Among the hospital’s many strengths, Barbash points to its trauma department, which played a significant role during the second intifada.
Back in those dark days in the early 2000s, Barbash says his medical staff always knew when to expect a sudden influx of terror victims: They could hear the blasts of the suicide bombs from across town.
“We would accept within half an hour 75 patients streaming in,” Barbash recalls. “We became expert in trauma medicine.”
He also says the hospital has prepared “for the next war, which by all intelligence scenarios will involve Tel Aviv.” Last year, it inaugurated the county’s largest emergency facility, a four-level underground ward with 700 beds that would offer patients protection against conventional, chemical and biological weapons. If cut off from the outside world, the unit could operate independently for up to a week.
“It is in a way shocking to think you are talking about 2012 in a modern civilized city,” he adds, “and that we need to think and plan for a situation of bombing civilians.”
Barbash prefers to dwell on the more positive aspects of the medical center, including the long relationship its staff has had with counterparts in Gaza.
“This began 14 years ago, when we had a fellowship with a Gaza hospital,” he recalls. “We took in 100 doctors from Gaza for training, funded by the Danish government. This positive relationship goes on despite any conflict. There are more than 60 patients from Gaza with us now; half of them are children undergoing complicated surgical procedures.”
The center also has an international face as a result of medical tourism, a growing trend in Israel. Though it represents only 10 percent of the hospital’s cases, medical tourism has become an increasingly important aspect of services in recent years. Citizens of countries around the world come to Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center for treatment.
“Israel has become an attractive site for medical tourists,” Barbash adds. “This is a fast-growing market, estimated in the billions of dollars.”
To keep all of the programs thriving, however, Barbash knows he will need additional funds from outside Israel. That’s why he targeted Silicon Valley.
“I want to establish wider-based relationships in the United States,” he says. “This is the first time we conducted such an effort.”
For information on Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, visit www.tasmc.org.il.