Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel

Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel stands in Petah Tikva, next to Beilinson Hospital, with which it works closely.[3] It is listed as a tertiary pediatric center with approximately 260 beds, owned by Clalit Health Services and academically affiliated with the Tel Aviv University School of Medicine.[3] The hospital's own introduction lists 304 beds, including 33 day-care hospitalization beds and 11 oncology day-care hospitalization beds.[4]

Since the opening of its Glass Building in May 2023, the campus covers approximately 75,000 square meters in total.[6] A 2024 report described approximately 250 inpatient beds across about 30 departments and institutes, along with a newly operating parking complex providing 1,555 spaces in six underground levels, a commercial floor, and a public garden of approximately 8,000 square meters with direct emergency-vehicle access.[7]

The impetus for the hospital came in the late 1980s, when Clalit Health Services approached New York philanthropist Irving Schneider about supporting a children's wing at Beilinson Hospital. Schneider instead asked whether Israel had a comprehensive children's hospital; a study he funded concluded it did not, and that children's departments within general hospitals did not sufficiently meet children's special needs.[8] Between 1986 and 1988, an international committee studied Israel's health system and pediatric needs, determining that a modern tertiary-care hospital dedicated solely to children was critically needed in Israel and the broader Middle East.[2]

Ground was broken on April 11, 1988.[9] The original proposal envisaged a building of about 20,000 square meters; the hospital ultimately built covered 35,000 square meters.[2] Designed by children's-hospital planner Marvin Bostin and architect Jerry Switzer, the seven-story structure arranged hospitalization wards on one side of a central passageway and day clinics on the other.[2] Helen Schneider contributed to the building's aesthetics and attention to children's needs, while Irving Schneider followed the project closely.[2]

The hospital was inaugurated on October 29, 1991, and officially opened to the public in April 1992.[2] It was established by Irving and Helen Schneider together with their daughters, Lynn and Mindy, around the founding idea of a comprehensive hospital devoted exclusively to children.[8] A 2021 Globes article also referred to Prof. Yehuda Danon as the hospital's founder, suggesting that different individuals played distinct roles in its establishment.[10]

The facility was initially called the Children's Medical Center of Israel. Irving Schneider had declined to have it named after him, but the name caused some members of the public to mistake it for a department of the neighboring adult hospital. After he was persuaded that the hospital needed an independent identity, it was renamed Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel in July 1995; Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin attended the occasion alongside Schneider.[9]

Schneider operates as Israel's national referral center for hematology-oncology, endocrinology and diabetes, cardiology, and organ and bone-marrow transplantation.[4] Its range of pediatric disciplines — all gathered under one roof — includes bone-marrow and organ transplantation, oncology, diabetes, cardiology, immunology, pediatric surgery, and imaging.[8] The hospital treats infants, children, teenagers, and young adults up to age 18, and in some cases up to age 21.[5]

The hospital's treatment philosophy is described as "whole-child-care": children are treated as children rather than small adults, with medical care integrated with emotional, psychological, educational, and developmental support.[4] The physical environment was designed to be friendly and nonthreatening, with spaces for children to play, draw, read, and use computers, and accommodations allowing parents to stay overnight.[11] Care is understood as involving the whole family, particularly when a child has a long-term illness such as diabetes or cancer.[11]

By 2019, the hospital recorded 53,000 children treated in its Emergency Medicine Department, 13,500 admissions, 36 organ transplants, 39 bone-marrow transplants, 12,000 surgeries, and 207,000 outpatient-clinic and institute visits, with 530 research studies underway that year, including 200 newly begun.[12]

Schneider performs the vast majority of children's organ-transplant operations in Israel and is among a small number of pediatric hospitals worldwide equipped to perform multiple organ transplants.[13][14] Since the center opened, more than 700 heart, lung, liver, and kidney transplants in infants, children, and adolescents have been performed there, with success rates described as comparable to those of leading medical centers worldwide.[13][14]

The hospital is the only medical center in Israel performing liver transplants in children.[15] In one reported single-day effort, teams performed four operations: a liver transplant for a nine-year-old girl, kidney transplants for an 18-year-old woman and a 2.5-year-old boy, and a heart transplant for a 3.5-year-old.[14] In 2022, a 13-year-old girl from Ukraine with Wilson disease was brought to Israel in a medical evacuation organized by Poland's government in cooperation with the hospital; her father donated a liver lobe, and a specialist transplant team carried out the procedure.[15]

The hospital's milestones include the opening of its Pediatric Nuclear Medicine Unit in April 2002, described as the first such unit dedicated to children in Israel and the Middle East.[9] In 2003, a domino transplant chain initiated by the organ donation of an 11-year-old Palestinian boy was conducted across Beilinson and Schneider, reportedly saving four children.[9]

In May 2023, Schneider opened its seven-story Glass Building, covering approximately 40,000 square meters and doubling the hospital's physical space.[16] The new structure includes two fortified underground floors housing an emergency hospital designed to withstand conventional, biological, and chemical attacks, along with a neonatal department with 52 beds, 28 of them in private rooms for a newborn and family.[16]

The building also houses a Research and Innovation Center, a Brain Diseases Center integrating neurology and psychiatry, an institute for clinical brain research, an eating-disorder unit, and an expanded educational center for hospitalized children.[16] New departments were planned with family rooms or rooms for two patients to reduce infection risk.[16] With the addition of the Glass Building, the hospital's director reported in 2023 that the campus employed almost 3,000 people and covered 75,000 square meters in total.[6]

Schneider was the first hospital in Israel's health system to operate an immersive room, using video projection on walls, ceiling, and floor, interactive content, and sensory effects to engage children and reduce tension during medical visits.[17] The room's equipment included four projectors and seven sensors; staff described using games to occupy children with attention difficulties while clinicians spoke with parents, and considered further applications in examinations, surgical explanations, and staff training.[17]

The hospital describes its treatment model as open to all children regardless of race, religion, or nationality, and receives patients from the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, as well as from Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe.[4] About 30% of its patients come from Arab sectors of Israel or from neighboring Middle Eastern countries, according to the hospital's own account.[18] Palestinian Authority and Israeli Arab children are hospitalized alongside Jewish children, and the hospital provides advanced training for Palestinian Authority doctors in areas including intensive care, urology, and nephrology.[18]

From its earliest years, the hospital articulated an international vision of serving not only Israel but also neighboring Arab countries and nearby countries such as Cyprus and Turkey.[11] Its then-director described the original ambition as making Schneider a regional resource and "a bridge to peace," observing that medicine is "one of the fields in which there is true coexistence."[11] The hospital is also a network organization of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's Department of Nursing, classified as an external medical organization.[19]

During the November 2023 hostage releases following the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel, Schneider received 26 freed hostages: 19 children, six mothers, and one grandmother.[1][5] CEO Dr. Efrat Bron-Harlev described preparing a dedicated ward over approximately three weeks, assembling a multidisciplinary team of psychiatrists, psychologists, pediatricians, surgeons, and dietitians.[1] The hospital aimed to give returnees control over everyday choices and prepared a homelike environment with toys, clothing, and the scent of clean laundry.[1]