Even as the management of Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem is carrying out a recovery plan to deal with its huge NIS 1.3 billion debt, its executives continue to enjoy profligate salaries. In a letter to employees today, Hadassah Hospital's administrative and support staff workers committee chairman Amnon Baruchian said that while management is seeking to fire 200 employees and is not paying salaries in full or vacation bonuses, the salary cost of Hadassah CEO Avigdor Kaplan was NIS 170,000 a month.
Baruchian added that the salary cost of Hadassah VP Shlomo Sirkis was NIS 70,000 a month and that the salary cost of VP human resources Rafi Lankri was NIS 80,000 a month.
Sources inform ''Globes'' that Kaplan and Hadassah chairwoman Esther Dominici appointed Lankri in mid-2013, after he held the similar job at the Bank of Israel.
Hadassah said that the figures were wrong, but declined to disclose other numbers, citing the Privacy Protection Law.
Baruchian says that Kaplan recently told the union that the salaries of the hospital's administrative and support staff were far higher than at government hospitals, a claim backed by the Ministry of Finance. "The confused CEO forgot to mention that the high salaries at the hospital are the salaries of its executives," said Baruchian in the letter. "The administrative and support staff are at the bottom of organization's salary table, and the hospital CEO shamelessly blames them for the hospital's collapse."
The sources said that Baruchian earns a gross monthly salary of NIS 38,000-40,000 as a ward manager, even though he is not one. Furthermore, he demanded that management establish 50 "extra emergency shifts" for administrative and support staff each month, amounting to a full day's pay for deputy ward and more senior managers, and that he personally demanded ten of these shifts. This was a condition for management to employ cleaners at the new hospital building through contractors. Baruchian confirmed the report in a conversation with "Globes", but said that this salary was paid to all ward chiefs and he was owed the shifts because he worked round the clock.
Healthcare sources say that the case of Hadassah Hospital should sound alarm bells against allowing private medical care at public hospitals. They say that private medical care sent salaries at Hadassah soaring, because nurses and administrative and support staff naturally demanded high salaries in view of the doctors' incomes. The sources say that private medical care creates a domino effect and that Hadassah Hospital is the best example of this. Hadassah Hospital has rejected Ministry of Finance demands to appoint a ministry controller.
Hadassah Hospital said in response, "The hospital CEO has no intention of being drawn into a bitter and unworthy confrontation in the media with the chairman of the administrative and support staff workers committee, which includes baseless and misleading presentations. Instead of slandering those working for the hospital's recovery and to save the jobs of thousands of dedicated workers, it would be better for the committee chairman to desist from his violent and inflammatory conduct, cooperate with management for the good of Hadassah's workers, and not to disrupt the hospital's recovery for his and his associates' populist reasons."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 1, 2014
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