Healthcare Fund “Clalit” started the new program with the aim to stop the confusion the patient often face. Now they are offered to ask 7 questions before leaving the doctor’s cabinet. 

The new program is launched in “Carmel” clinic (Haifa) and very soon it will also be launched in the recent “Clalit” clinics in the country. The purpose of the program is to make patients take part in their treatment and prevent any possible mistakes. According to the international researches most part of the patients don’t understand all details of their own condition and the treatment prescribed. Due to Dr. Poria Shahaf the head of the Patients Care and Risk avoidance Department the one of the reasons of such situation is the patients simply don’t ask their doctors at all.

According to the new program all patients will be provided with a booklet. It will contain the major questions the patients have to ask their doctors, as follows:

1. What treatment or operation I’m going to get?
2. What are the possible complications?
3. What tests I shall pass through?
4. What are they needed for?
5. Who and when will tell me the results of the tests?
6. What drugs I’ll be prescribed?
7. How can I prevent the disease to remain healthy person?

The Annals of Emergency Medicine magazine published the results of the experiment for the last year. According to the data provided over 75% of the patients brought into the reanimation don’t understand the prescriptions of their doctors properly.

Dr. Shahaf says that: “Even highly educated people leaving their doctor’s cabinet are unable to answer simple questions about their health”. “Millions of people have no sufficient information and thus don’t perform the doctor’s prescriptions too often. This fact affects their health negatively.”

Dr. Shahaf says: “We start the new age where the patient is not the passive treatment object. Instead of this the doctor and the patient are to become partners in health strengthening. In case this or that clinic will be able to establish a system with the patient as the competent partner then it will help to avoid various faults in the future”.