The report reveals that the rate of beds in general wards in 2022 in Israel was 2.1 beds per thousand people, compared to an average of 2.4 in developed countries. Israel’s place is fourth from the bottom of the table, with South Korea at the top with 7.3 hospital beds per thousand inhabitants, followed by Germany with A health system that is considered one of the best in the world – it has 5.8 hospital beds per thousand inhabitants, and is close to Lithuania (5.1), Austria (5.0), Belgium (4.9), Slovakia (4.8), Poland (4.4), Hungary (4.3) and the Czech Republic (4.2) .
The rate of psychiatric hospitalization beds is even lower: in Israel 0.3 hospitalization beds in mental health departments per thousand inhabitants, with Korea and Belgium at the top of the list with 1.3 beds. The OECD average in this area is rather low and stands at 0.1 beds per thousand people. Even in the rehabilitation departments, Israel’s situation is bad with 0.3 hospital beds per thousand people, below the OECD average of 0.5 beds per thousand people. At the top of the list of hospitalization wards is Germany with 2 rehabilitation beds per thousand inhabitants.
According to the Ministry of Health, in the next five years, 1,790 additional hospital beds are expected to be added so that there will be approximately 17,500 general hospital beds in Israel. In the rehabilitation departments, the Ministry of Health will add 300 beds, for which a new rehabilitation center will be opened in Hadassah for the Jerusalem area, and a new rehabilitation center that is expected to open in the Furia Hospital for the residents of the north. Another 245 beds are expected to be added in the psychiatric wards, most of them in general hospitals.
“The State of Israel is in a very complex period,” said the Minister of Health, Uriel Bosso, “These days are also an opportunity for us to promote the changes required to ensure the continued proper functioning of the system. The multi-year plan for allocating hospital beds that we recently presented is an important step within the actions we are promoting to shorten The queues in the health system, and in the mental health system, as well as improving accessibility and the quality of medical care. We are implementing additional necessary steps for the welfare of the public, including increasing the medical, professional and auxiliary personnel in all fields of medicine, upgrading and expanding health infrastructures, implementing support for the health insurance funds at the base The health basket that makes it possible to create a long-term planning and operational horizon, increase the hospital budget by more than a billion and a quarter shekels, and more. We will continue to work to improve the service, advance the system and adapt it to the challenges of the future.”
“As part of the strategic plan for the health system, about two thousand beds were added in the last bed plan for hospitalization, rehabilitation and mental health,” added the Director General of the Ministry of Health, Moshe Bar Siman Tov, “at the same time, the Ministry encourages the health funds to continue developing the home hospitalization and rehabilitation system , and promotes the establishment of additional hospitals that are supposed to increase the number of beds in the north and south. Adding beds is critical to improving the medical service for the residents of the State of Israel and the Ministry will continue the necessary actions for this. The addition of beds also means a need for additional personnel, for this purpose we have worked in the last year to increase the number of new medical students with the goal of increasing to 2,000 students each year by the end of the decade, as well as to increase the number of brothers and sisters in Israel. In addition, the Ministry of Health is working to increase the number of specialist doctors in all fields and geographic areas, by funding interns in the community in the health funds.