6. The State is committed to the Patient’s Rights Law that declares the right of every patient to receive “proper medical treatment” with respect to the professional level and quality of medicine. This is the logic underlying the singularity of medical practice according to the Physicians Ordinance, and expanding the authority of others may contradict the legal and proper standard.

7. The overall responsibility for patient treatment is always that of the doctor and not of support personnel of any kind.

8. The limits of delegating authority are the safety and treatment quality limits, and not political and economic considerations.

9. There is no substitute for the extensive years of study and enormous professional knowledge accumulated by the doctor in diagnosing and providing medical treatment to the patient. The qualification process, the experience, the broad knowledge base, the treatment standard, the doctor’s special ability and expertise as well as the ability to remain up-to-date with the latest scientific literature positions the doctor to provide the best and must suitable medical care.

10. The justified arguments concerning the development of medical science and increased complexity of treatment constitute the primary motivation for just the opposite – for protecting at any cost the professional authority of the doctor that studied, was trained and gained experience over many years in a specific specialty. The qualification level of pharmacists, nurses and para-medical professionals with respect to complex medical treatment has yet to be proved.

11. The criteria of “customer satisfaction level” (for accessible and convenient treatment) that is adopted from the business world should not constitute the decisive consideration in the medical field in which “service quality” is a matter of life and death.

12. Expanding the authority to other caregivers requires the preparation of a suitable infrastructure that includes imparting the professional standards and the legal and ethical rules that will apply to them upon receipt of the authority.

13. In any event, public responsibility requires informing the patients concerning potential problems and risks involved in delegating medical authority to an individual that is not a doctor.

14. Any committee that will be established to decide on medical procedures that are currently the authority of the doctor and their transfer to another authority must include medical-professional entities and representatives of the various scientific associations and of the IMA that will be able to explore the various issues and examine the possibly fateful ramifications. The proposal of the Ministry of Finance only mentions a “joint committee of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Finance”, while we maintain that examination of such a systemic change requires the use of tools held by doctors working in the field, and certainly depends on full cooperation with these doctors. The Ministry of Finance is entirely irrelevant to professional decisions on these issues.