Medical Malpractice by Magen David Adom

Magen David Adom is a corporation operating under the Magen David Adom Law, 1950, which establishes the organization's purposes and objectives. Among other things, the statute stipulates that the corporation's purpose is "to maintain first aid services for the benefit of all residents." In practice, this organization is the central body in the State of Israel responsible for providing primary medical and rescue services to the population. The service includes responding to calls at Magen David Adom stations deployed in various locations throughout the country, providing initial medical treatment in the field or at the patient's home through a team arriving at the scene, and evacuation to the nearest emergency room as quickly as possible when necessary.

Naturally, Magen David Adom's services are often required for providing urgent medical care. This applies primarily to emergency situations or situations in which the injured person is in significant medical distress, such as in cases of severe head trauma, infants or minors suffering from choking as a result of swallowing a foreign object, heart attack, cardiac arrest, significant bleeding caused by various circumstances, significant cardiac arrhythmias, loss of consciousness, and more.

Consequently, any deviation from reasonable conduct, whether in a delay in the medical team's arrival at the scene of the incident, in providing treatment that does not meet the required standard, lack of essential emergency equipment, and delay in evacuation, may lead to irreversible damage to the patient and even premature death.

Magen David Adom, as an organization employing the medical teams operating on its behalf, bears vicarious liability for the actions or omissions of its employees, and it is the entity that owes a duty of care to its patients. Therefore, in cases where the ambulance or intensive care mobile unit was dispatched with an unreasonable delay since notification of the incident, when an appropriate team was not sent given the circumstances of the incident, and even if the dispatcher's conduct deviated from reasonable conduct, there is reason to examine the possibility of medical malpractice on the part of Magen David Adom.

Hence, when seeking to examine Magen David Adom's activity in a particular incident, one must examine the activity of all parties involved in the incident at its various stages, starting from the stage of the call and conversation with the dispatcher, through the team's arrival at the location to which it was called, the manner of treatment, and up to the time of evacuation to the hospital and transfer of the patient or injured person to hospital care.

Our office has extensive experience representing plaintiffs who were injured due to negligence by Magen David Adom teams, from the response at the dispatch center to the treatment itself by the on-call team.

If you have suffered damage as a result of negligence in the provision of medical treatment, you may have grounds for filing a medical malpractice lawsuit. Our office specializes in medical malpractice lawsuits, has accumulated extensive medical knowledge and experience over decades of activity, and works with leading medical experts. Therefore, we recommend contacting our office immediately for legal consultation and examination of the feasibility of filing a lawsuit on grounds of medical malpractice.