United Hatzalah presents its side
United Hatzalah founder and president Eli Beer was actually a MDA volunteer after he witnessed, at age 15, the deadly terrorist bombing of an Egged bus in Jerusalem. At 17, Beer realized that a more flexible system had to be established to improve emergency response times. He was familiar with the Hatzalah model established in the US and began to organize a similar model by launching a volunteer unit in his Jerusalem neighborhood. In the 1990s, Hatzalah Israel existed and was an umbrella organization, incorporating many Hatzalah chapters that had been established throughout the country. Citing a lack of transparency and administrative effectiveness in Hatzalah Israel, Beer formally left the organization and established United Hatzalah of Israel.
A core group of professionals quickly joined the new organization and were followed by Hatzalah chapters throughout the country. Beer has personally saved many lives here and abroad and received numerous citations here and abroad, including the Presidential Award for Volunteerism, and became a Young Global Leader in Davos.
Asked to comment on MDA’s statements, Beer said: “I would like to clarify a few points regarding the ongoing reasons that MDA refuses to cooperate with UH, Israel’s first all-volunteer national emergency medical services organization. We are the first to provide all medical services free of charge. In addition to maintaining a national average response time of fewer than three minutes, in many large cities such Jerusalem and parts of the Tel Aviv, our average response time is less than 90 seconds.
“We were the first in the world to come up with and apply advanced GPS tracking technology, known as the Moskowitz Lifecompass technology, to the field of EMS in order to notify community-based, highly trained medical first responders of a medical emergency in their vicinity. Our organization was the first in Israel to incorporate ambucycles – motorcycles that contain all of the medical equipment that an ambulance has, with the exception of a backboard, stretcher, chair, and bed, in an effort to severely decrease medical response times. We were also the first to incorporate ambutractors, first responder bicycles, an ambuboat and jet skis that enable us to help any patient regardless of the terrain. If someone is in need of medical assistance, we are there to help, and we are prepared to arrive to help that person as fast as we possibly can. We are always looking to innovate new technology in order to decrease response time and the time it takes to treat a patient once we arrive on scene.
“Our community-based responder model, which in Israel can alert and activate any of our 3,200 responders at any time of day or night, is one that is revolutionizing EMS systems around the world. Our technology and community-based model are being used in numerous locations in 10 different countries. While we did not invent the idea of a Hatzalah community-based response, we are the first to nationalize it and to expand this model to provide free medical services to anyone, in any community in Israel, regardless of faith, gender, race, or financial capability.
“All of our services, including our applications and technologies that can be downloaded by anyone for free, such as our Ten Kavod project that sends EMS volunteers to provide free checkups for the elderly and help them manage their health care, and our psychotrauma unit, which provides free psychological and emotional treatment during traumatic emergency calls. In addition, we have also begun providing free transport to hospitals via our growing fleet of ambulances. In the 11 years of UH, we have treated over two million patients, and never once did any of them receive a bill for services.
Following a recent article publicized in The Marker that described how 27% of Israelis who had a heart attack refused to call an MDA ambulance due to the high cost involved, UH has taken upon itself to increase its ambulance fleet to give free transport to the hospital for anyone who cannot afford an ambulance.
“We want to work together with MDA. We currently cooperate very effectively and amicably with dozens of other ambulance services here, and we have a bilateral agreement to share all information between us and both sides do so effectively. We don’t want to replace MDA nor have we ever wanted to. We want to cooperate with them, as they too are a great organization involved in saving hundreds of lives each day. Unfortunately, MDA’s director Eli Bin continually finds reasons to avoid working with us.
“MDA works together with the Red Crescent and shares with it information and even hands over patients. Why is it that they cannot work with us, their natural partners to save Israelis? They even seem to try to impede our volunteers from responding as fast as they can by not providing critical information, such as the exact address of people who have called for help. They have even gone so far as to remove the exact addresses from all beeper messages sent out to their volunteers, including their apps, partly to prevent volunteers who work with both organizations from receiving the information.
“We want their dispatch center to work with ours so that EMS personnel can arrive at a medical emergency faster, regardless of who arrives first. The sharing of information will save lives. If our responders can arrive in 90 seconds, then they should have all of the information necessary to provide medical treatment as fast as possible. If they are kept waiting for long minutes, the critical minutes that matter, by MDA dispatch centers to receive an exact address, that time can cost a choking baby its life.
“The request by Magen David Adom to force all UH volunteers to use their application is a direct attempt to control the volunteers who wish to work only with our organization. And that cannot be allowed to come to pass. We are an independent and nationally recognized EMS provider, and we intend to remain so. I hereby call upon Eli Bin to meet with me and work out any grievances he has to put this matter to rest and allow for the sharing of all pertinent information between our two organizations and to cooperate with us in saving lives.”