IF YOU WANT TO START A PROFITABLE BUSINESS IN ISRAEL, consider stand-alone diagnostic clinics.
Every time my family physician orders a test, even a simple ultrasound or CT, I am forced o travel to a hospital in another town. Apparently this is standard procedure for most doctors.
Since I don’t (yet) have a car, I have to depend on others to get me to, and return me from, the test site.
Inconvenient.
CAVEAT
Israel is a socialist country with capitalism in its blood. It also is a nation of clerks (left over from the English) and much more bureaucratic than anything this scrivener ever encountered in North America.
When I lived in Hollywood FL, my PCP lacked diagnostic tools. He did have a scale and a sphygmomanometer (https://tinyurl.com/jmr9fd7x); my Israeli family doctor has a sphygmomanometer that gathers dust, but lacks a scale. The most the majority of PCPs in the U.S. can do is draw blood and take urine samples — which they then send to a lab. (I took my lab order to either Quest or LabCorp, both of which have phlebotomists who stick 20 or more people a day with sharp needles and know how to do it as painlessly as possible. General rule: Never let a doctor draw blood or give a shot; they don’t do it often enough to remain proficient.) Here, the phlebotomist is one door down from the doctor.
Diagnostic clinic option
ANYWAY, Hollywood has the Hollywood Diagnostics Center (https://hdc1984.com/), a/k/a HDC. HDC has a whole litany of services, almost anything that does not require hospitalization.
If a test DOES require an overnight stay, there are multiple hospitals within a few miles, including a Level One trauma center. I have first hand experience with both MDC and Hollywood Memorial’s “system.” I rarely needed tests at Memorial.
Minute Clinics are not the same as a diagnostic clinic, although most are equipped for minor tests, e.g., EKGs and x-rays. There are minute clinics in Israel, but, and it is a BIG BUT, unlike the minute clinics in the U.S., these open only after the “regular” clinics (doctors’ offices) close.
Patient options
The daytime options are:
- ☤ Doctor’s office
☤ Hospital triage center, formerly “emergency room,” but now more accurately named.
After hours options are:
- ☤ Minute clinic
☤ Hospital triage center, formerly “emergency room,” but now more accurately named.
In the States, trips to the emergency room are discouraged; it simply costs too much and it often unnecessarily burdens the system.
Here, in a triage center, a patient with a true emergency is attended to quickly; walk-ins can cool their heels for an hour or more — just like a U.S. hospital’s ER.
- As an aside, based on first hand experience, there is no discrimination in an Israeli hospital’s triage center or minute clinic. A patient is a patient is a patient — Jew, Muslim, “none of the above.”
Center menu
- ☤ Bone Density Scan
☤ CT Scan
☤ Echocardiogram
☤ EKG
☤ High-field MRI
☤ Mammography with 3D tomography
☤ Open MRI
☤ PET Scan
☤ Ultrasound
☤ Ultrasound-guided Breast Biopsy
☤ X-ray
This is not intended as an advertisement for HDC. but as a sample of what would nice to have closer to my neighborhood than a hospital in another town.
In addition to having a majority of tests available locally — even if the tests must be vetted by specialists (e.g., cardiologists, urologists, radiologists) elsewhere, the patient who may have multiple tests ordered (e.g., ultrasound and CT scan) may get several done at the same location. I was transported by ambulance from one part of the hospital to another for tests — huge, multi-building complex.
Is it worth it?
The question investors must ask: Is it worth the aggravation of dealing with a plethora of ministries, the costs of establishing a business, of convincing family physicians that stand-alone diagnostic clinics are as good as hospitals, less expensive for insurance plans, and more convenient for the patient.
Other companies have set up operations in Israel and done well.
But it takes determination and a large start-up budget.
Now, if someone would just put the stand-alone clinic on wheels — PERFECT !.
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