Assuta Medical Center

Assuta combines a nationwide private hospital and medical-center network with a public hospital in Ashdod, under the ownership of Maccabi Healthcare Services.[5] Its private services are available to patients through supplementary health-fund coverage or private health insurance, while the Ashdod university hospital operates as a public hospital.[3] The network's clinical fields include oncology, surgery, medical imaging, cardiology, fertility, hematology, bariatrics, pain treatment, brain health, ophthalmology, physiotherapy, and sleep medicine.[6]

The network's organizational overview lists four private hospitals, in Tel Aviv's Ramat HaHayal district, Haifa, Rishon LeZion, and Beersheba, and four medical centers: HaShalom in Tel Aviv, Ra’anana, Ashdod Kalaniot, and Jerusalem.[1] It also operates three mobile MRI and mammography units that visit hundreds of locations around Israel, extending access to examinations beyond its fixed facilities.[1] Ashdod Kalaniot is a separate facility from the public university hospital that opened in Ashdod in 2017.[1][5]

Assuta's development has linked patient choice and private medical provision with substantial surgical activity, advanced diagnostic equipment, academic affiliations, and hospital construction.[1][3] Its public hospital in Ashdod introduced an integrated-care model intended to connect hospital treatment with health funds and community services, including care after discharge.[7]

Published accounts differ on Assuta's founding year: a Ynet retrospective gives 1935, while a 2021 Calcalist profile gives 1934.[3][4] The original Tel Aviv hospital on Jabotinsky Street was a private institution established by German immigrant physicians.[3] The founding partnership comprised 30 doctors who invested approximately 40,000 Palestine pounds, and patients could choose their treating physicians.[3] Freedom of choice and a patient-centered approach were central to the founders' intended alternative to the existing health system.[1]

Clal acquired Assuta in 1979 and operated it for 15 years before Maccabi Healthcare Services purchased the hospital in 1994.[3] Maccabi had also acquired Ramat Marpe; the two hospitals initially retained separate brands before consolidation under the Assuta name began in the early 2000s.[3] Acquisitions, renovations, and new facilities supported this expansion, reflecting Maccabi's decision to develop a hospital system through existing institutions rather than build one entirely from the beginning.[3]

A subsequent expansion timeline included nationwide growth in 2005 and the opening of the Ramat HaHayal flagship hospital in Tel Aviv in 2009.[3] The new hospital brought together the activities of the former Assuta Tel Aviv and Assuta Petah Tikva hospitals.[8] At its opening, the facility covered 50,000 square meters and was reported to have 230 inpatient beds, 13 intensive-care beds, and 16 operating rooms, alongside imaging, radiation-treatment, pain, and laboratory services.[9] Its annual surgical target was approximately 60,000 operations, compared with about 55,000 then performed by the old Tel Aviv Assuta and Ramat Marpe together.[9]

By 2011, Assuta operated hospitals in Tel Aviv, Rishon Lezion, Haifa, and Beersheba, as well as outpatient centers in Tel Aviv, Ashdod, Ra’anana, and Ashkelon; its headquarters were at the Tel Aviv hospital.[10] Later milestones included a professional-development school in 2014, cooperation with insurance companies in 2015, and the Ramat HaHayal hospital's affiliation with Ben-Gurion University's medical faculty in 2016.[3]

The Ashdod public hospital project followed a 2002 law calling for a hospital in the city and a state tender published in August 2009.[10] In 2011, Assuta won responsibility for planning, financing, building, and running the hospital—the first such state tender awarded to a private institution since Israel's establishment.[10] The tender specified at least 300 beds on public land in eastern Ashdod.[10] In 2017, Ashdod was described as Israel's fifth-largest city and the only one of the country's ten largest cities without a hospital; the new facility was the first public hospital built in Israel in 40 years.[7]

Departments began receiving patients in stages during 2017, with outpatient services starting in June, operating rooms in August, and children's and cardiology departments in September.[7] The public hospital's opening is dated to November 2017.[5] Construction cost more than NIS 1 billion, with opening-period figures including over NIS 300 million invested by Assuta Medical Centers and a NIS 900 million government grant.[7]

A further major construction project replaced Assuta's earlier Beersheba hospital with a new facility that opened in June 2025 after five years of construction.[11][12] The investment was approximately NIS 300 million, and the replacement hospital was intended to serve patients from all health funds.[11][12]

Assuta's English-language organizational overview gives an annual patient-service figure of approximately 2.2 million, alongside around 680,000 consultations and diagnostic assessments and approximately 120,000 surgeries.[13] It lists about 3,700 employees and 2,700 specialist physicians, with women accounting for 77% of employees and medical teams.[13] In a separate 2025 description, the network's chief executive put the number of doctors working across Assuta at approximately 3,000.[11]

The Ashdod hospital's opening-period recruitment included 250 physicians and 500 nurses.[7] At that time, the city had approximately 250,000 residents, while the surrounding area brought the population the hospital was intended to serve to about 500,000.[7] Assuta expected the new hospital to create 1,200 jobs in the city.[7]

Individual medical centers also handle substantial patient volumes: HaShalom in Tel Aviv serves approximately 20,000 patients each month, while Ashdod Kalaniot reports approximately 210,000 treatments and examinations and more than 7,500 surgeries annually.[14][15] The mobile examination units broaden the network's geographic reach by taking MRI and mammography services to hundreds of locations throughout the country.[1]

Assuta's surgical work ranges from routine procedures to brain and open-heart surgery.[3] A 2018 account described it as Israel's largest surgical hospital at that time, performing more than 100,000 operations annually, and noted advanced oncology equipment, surgical robotics, and Israel's first PET-MRI device.[3] Its current organizational overview places annual surgical activity at approximately 120,000 operations.[13]

Fertility treatment is another major field of activity: Assuta's IVF units perform approximately one-third of Israel's total IVF treatments.[16] The service includes specialized laboratories, operating rooms, recovery facilities, and dedicated embryo-transfer rooms.[16] At Ramat HaHayal, the IVF unit uses the RI Witness system as a treatment-safety measure.[8]

Ramat HaHayal introduced Israel's first integrated MRI-guided radiotherapy linear accelerator in 2019 and also uses robotic surgery and AI-supported medical imaging.[8] Its academic affiliation with Ben-Gurion University's medical faculty dates to 2016.[3] The university's affiliated-unit entry for the hospital records 239 research outputs, with breast cancer, diseases, and non-small-cell lung cancer among its prominent research-topic fingerprints.[2]

Academic organizational listings distinguish Assuta Hospital in Ramat HaHayal and Samson Assuta Ashdod University Hospital as clinical units, while separately listing Assuta Medical Center and Maccabi Healthcare Services as external medical organizations.[17] Samson Assuta Ashdod University Hospital also appears among the affiliations of a 2026 article on the Israeli IBD Research Nucleus, a consortium involving five tertiary academic inflammatory bowel disease referral centers.[18] The consortium established a nationwide registry integrating information from Israel's four national health maintenance organizations.[18]

At Ashdod, integrated care was designed to coordinate treatment among the hospital, health funds, and community services.[7] Plans described by chairman Joshua Shemer included shared electronic patient information and a hospital case manager following care from the emergency department through other departments and after discharge.[7] The objective was to reduce gaps in referrals and follow-up rather than treat hospital admission as an isolated episode.[7]

Assuta has also participated in medical training and emergency treatment beyond elective care.[19][20] In September 2019, the Ashdod hospital hosted joint Israeli-Palestinian training that included tracheotomies on small children and babies.[19] Following a stabbing attack at the Friendly mall in Gan Yavne, near Ashdod, three seriously wounded people, aged 17, 20, and 25, were taken to Assuta Hospital in Ashdod.[20] During the coronavirus crisis, Assuta head Prof. Shuki Shemer, a former Health Ministry director general, participated as a COVID-19 expert in an April 2020 simulation of government deliberations on the response.[21]

Ramat HaHayal is the largest hospital in Assuta's network.[8] Its facility description lists an eight-floor hospitalization building, a 13-floor institute and clinic tower, 21 operating rooms, 200 hospital beds, and 12 intensive-care beds.[8] These figures describe the hospital separately from the capacity reported at its 2009 opening.[8][9] The site combines inpatient and operative care with specialist institutes, clinics, oncology technology, and fertility services.[8]

The public hospital in Ashdod was built around a nine-floor inpatient building and a seven-floor outpatient clinic connected by a four-story lobby, with a total facility area of approximately 750,000 square feet.[7] Its design included protection against missile attacks and chemical and biological weapons, while one-third of patient rooms were private and the remainder provided double occupancy.[7] The facility also met voluntary Israeli green-building standards.[7]

Ashdod's emergency department was designed to treat patients in shared areas according to urgency, rather than divide them into conventional surgical, internal-medicine, and orthopedic sections.[7] Its cancer center included two linear accelerators for radiotherapy, and the heart center included a catheterization unit.[7] These clinical facilities formed part of the hospital's integrated-care approach at opening.[7]

The replacement Beersheba hospital occupies approximately 17,000 square meters across seven medical floors.[12] Opening reports listed 39 inpatient beds, five operating rooms, recovery and inpatient departments, a laboratory, and a blood bank; a separate description rounded the bed count to about 40 and included an intensive-care department.[11][12] It replaced the network's earlier hospital in the city rather than adding a second Assuta hospital there.[11]

HaShalom Medical Center in Tel Aviv opened in 2007 following investment of tens of millions of shekels.[14] It occupies seven floors and approximately 6,000 square meters, with diagnostic and treatment clinics, a breast-imaging institute, ophthalmology and laser-vision services, and a Sleep and Fatigue Institute.[14]

Ashdod Kalaniot was established in 2001 and contains medical institutes, clinics, and operating rooms serving patients insured by Israeli health maintenance organizations.[15] Assuta's Rishon LeZion hospital, located in the city's western industrial area behind Zahav Mall, primarily performs elective, planned surgery and procedures.[22]

Assuta's expansion raised debate about the relationship between private provision and public medicine.[9][10] Public-hospital leaders expressed concern at Ramat HaHayal's 2009 opening about competition for patients and staff.[9] In the Ashdod project, the Health Ministry expressed concern about a public hospital being established by a private body, while explaining that the Treasury did not want to build another state-owned hospital.[10] Health economist Dov Chernichovsky argued that sustainable funding, public regulation, and patients receiving their entitled care mattered more than ownership alone.[10]

A Health Ministry committee investigating the 2022 embryo mix-up at Rishon LeZion identified errors in embryo preparation and patient identification, deficient records, and failures in safety culture and risk-management oversight.[23] It found that treatment cycles had increased by tens of percent since 2017 without corresponding staffing and working-condition adjustments, and ordered a 50% reduction in IVF activity.[23] The committee also criticized the ministry's own oversight tools.[23]

The resulting family-law case continued for several years.[24] A November 2024 family-court ruling ordered the child, Sofia, transferred to her biological parents, but an appeals court reversed that decision and the Supreme Court declined further review, leaving her with the parents who had raised her.[24] In October 2025, the ministry permanently revoked the former IVF laboratory director's management permit and suspended an embryologist's professional license for two years, subject to appeal, following findings of procedural and management failures.[24]

Separately, in July 2023 the ministry barred the Tel Aviv IVF department from accepting new patients after incidents including a child found not to be genetically linked to the father and 13 fertilized eggs drying up in storage.[25] It limited combined egg-retrieval and embryo-transfer procedures to 25 per workday, required work to end by 11 p.m., and directed Assuta to appoint an independent senior adviser on treatment safety and incident reporting.[25] In reporting on the underlying paternity-related case, Assuta said its examination found no indication of an error, while the ministry maintained that the event should have been reported.[26]