The Emek Medical Center of Clalit Group was established in 1924 in Kibbutz Ein Harod for the purpose of providing medical services to the inhabitants of the settlements that had started to take roots in the Valley of Jezreel in those years. Several years later, the growth of the population made it necessary to expand the hospital, and in 1930 the hospital was relocated to its present location at the foot of the Moreh Hill.
Today, the Emek Medical Center is the largest medical center in the north-eastern corner of Israel, serving a population of more than half a million in surrounding cities and settlements. The Emek Medical Center offers 537 inpatient beds, intensive care units, a network of operating rooms and surgical wards, large institutes and outpatient clinics, state-of-the-art laboratories and other medical services. Over the last decade, the Emek Medical Center has undergone accelerated development, including the addition of inpatient beds, the establishment of new wards and medical services, such as the rehabilitation ward that is the first of its kind in the north-eastern part of Israel, the introduction of advanced medical technologies and new surgical methodologies, as well as the joining of medical experts that are leaders in their fields.
Emek - Building Effective Medicine for the North
The Multidisciplinary Center of Advanced Medicine
The Multidisciplinary Advanced Medicine tower is scheduled to open at the end of 2017. The center will comprise the Breast Care Center for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients under one roof, with the most advanced mammography machine and a multidisciplinary approach, state-of-the-art and operating rooms built to bomb-shelter specifications, the advanced MRI institute, the rehabilitation ward, physiotherapy and occupational therapy institutes and the therapy pool. The tower will include delivery rooms built to bomb-shelter specifications, maternity and neonatal wards, as well as surgical wards.
Excellence and Quality of Treatment are a Way of Life at Emek
The Emek Medical Center is an academic institution that is fully affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine of the Israel Institute of Technology (“Technion”), where medical and nursing professions are taught. Additionally, as most medical wards and units at the Emek Medical Center are recognized for internship in various fields of medicine, the medical staff of the Center comprises medical students, residents and interns, alongside nursing students. A newly introduced function at the Medical Center is the Authority for the Advancement of Research, headed by Prof. Eliezer Shalev, who up until recently had served as Dean of the Technion’s Faculty of Medicine. Research at Emek has progressed significantly in the past decade, including the construction of the Advancement of Healthcare and Research Building, which comprises advanced research laboratories, where more than 300 medical studies in a variety of fields are carried out at any given time. Emek is the first Israeli hospital to receive (in 2008) the accreditation by the Joint Commission International (JCI) for quality and safety of medicine, and is recognized in the professional community as an innovator and leader of quality processes at a national level. The medical quality rating that the Ministry of Health has been publishing in recent years consistently places Emek among the leading hospitals in both the achievement of objectives and patient service reviews.
Dr. Orna Blondheim (Assistant Clinical Professor) - CEO of the Emek Medical Center
In 2002, Asst. Prof. Orna Blondheim was the first woman to be appointed CEO of a hospital in Israel - Schneider Children’s Medical Center. Prior to heading Schneider, she had served as Deputy CEO of the Emek Medical Center. Since 2003, Asst. Prof. Blondheim manages the Emek Medical Center, an organization that provides medical services to half a million inhabitants of the north-eastern part of Israel.Asst. Prof. Blondheim, a mother of 4, graduated from the Hebrew University and decided to settle in the Galilee, guided by the ideology of a stronger periphery and the bridging of gaps in Israeli society. She is trained as a pediatrician and neonatologist and has specialized in neonatal and preterm intensive care in the United States. Despite being located in the periphery, Asst. Prof. Blondheim manages to position the Emek Medical Center as an advanced and well-respected hospital and to raise resources for the development and equalization of conditions in the periphery to the medical services that are available in central Israel, aiming to realize her vision of a leading medical and academic center that provides comprehensive services to the people of north-eastern Israel.
For additional information on the Emek Medical Center visit the website: www.haemek.co.il, the Youtube channel and and the Facebook page of the Foundation for Development of the Emek Medical Center.
