Public values personal physicians much more than state institutions

The majority of the public has little faith in state institutions, including the health, education and justice systems, but most Israelis do trust their family physicians to a great extent, and less so the hospitals.

This came out of a representative survey of adults conducted by Tel Aviv University’s Cohen Institute for Public Opinion Research for the Dead Sea Conference of the Israel National Institute for Health Policy Research that opened on Wednesday.

The conference is being attended by numerous leading figures in the health system who in most cases failed to predict accurately the views of the public. The theme of the 17th annual conference is “The Patient at the Center.”

Dr. Giora Kaplan, a health researcher at the Gertner Institute for Epidemiology and Health Policy in Tel Aviv, said there are significant gaps between the image that members of the public have toward their primary care physician in the community and the hospital teams. They expect to be treated well by the family doctor and much less well by hospital teams,” he said. Most also didn’t agree with the statements that “the doctor knows best what my health situation is,” and, “My doctor’s decision is always based on what is best for me and not on the health fund’s or drug companies’ economic interests.”

Most Israelis, according to the poll, say they want to actively decide what treatment they, get based on all the explanations they get from doctors.

While correctly predicting that most people have little faith in state institutions, the conference participants missed out on predicting most other public views, such as that they appreciated the family physician much more than hospital staffers; that most wanted autonomy to make medical decisions; and the general appreciation for the public health funds.