Detroit Teaches Israel
About Pain Control

PHIL JACOBS EDITOR

T

Dr. John Finn sees a way to help Israel's problem with
pain control.

64;V:

hey have learned about medicine
together, politics together, agri-
culture, science, journalism and
civics. Now they're learning how
to make dying a less painful experience
... together.
Partnership 2000, the Jewish Feder-
ation of Metropolitan Detroit's project
to link Israel's Central Galilee with De-
troit, has taken on the idea of hospice.
Here in Detroit, the Hospice of South-
eastern Michigan has perhaps the na-
tion's only department of Jewish hospice
services, directed by Rabbi E.B. Freed-
man.
The Hospice of Southeastern Michi-
gan also has Dr. John W. Finn as its
medical director. Dr. Finn held an in-
ternship at Sinai Hospital and also par-
ticipated in a Readers Digest
international fellowship at the Nazareth
Hospital in Israel.
Last summer, Dr. Motti Lipshitz, the
director of the Ha'Emek Medical Cen-
ter, a 500-bed regional hospital, visited
Detroit and spent a day at the Hospice
of Southeastern Michigan.
Federation then sent Dr. Finn and
Rabbi Freedman on a four-day infor-

mation-gathering trip. The team met
with doctors, social workers, clergy, ad-
ministrators, nurses, pharmacists, psy-
chologists, therapists and others.
They visited clinics, hospitals, adult
day care centers and community cen-
ters. They talked with Jews, Christians
and Muslims.
"This was a people-to-people kind of
project," said Rabbi Freedman.
"Dr. Finn came back saying that this
was the sort of project we needed to be
doing."
"I consider myself a Christian Zion-
ist," said Dr. Finn. "It was a wonder-
ful trip we were on, and it was so great
to come away feeling we could be help-
ful."
The trip gave Dr. Finn an opportu-
nity to witness Israel's state-managed
care system, known as Kupat Cholim,
which does not pay for home health care
or palliative medicine (pain control) at
home. Typically, when an Israeli is in
pain, he has to go to a hospital or med-
ical center to receive medications. The
emergency rooms and hospital beds are
clogged with people who just want a way
to learn how to manage their pain.
Rabbi Freedman said the trip showed
lack of personnel in the area of pain con-
trol, as well as inadequate supplies of
pain control medications.
"If the main issue is pain control, then
what we saw is a real problem," said
Rabbi Freedman. "The Israeli sys-
tem under-budgets for palliative care.
What we suggested time and time
again is that all of this is much bet-

ter and easier to control at home."
The result of this Partnership -2000
visit is a two-year pilot demonstration
project. Dr. Finn and Rabbi Freedman g
have asked Partnership 2000 to fund a -
doctor, a nurse, a social worker/psy-
chotherapist and a community rela-
tions/clergy coordinator in Israel. That
team would probably come to Detroit to
study the Hospice of Southeastern
Michigan's system. Rabbi Freedman
and Dr. Finn would return to Israel with
the team for a short visit.
Besides setting up a hospice team,
the two-year plan for Central Galilee
would also include the treatment of
some 50 patients at any given time; the
service of up to 400 patients per year;
the promotion of the concepts of corn-
passionate care for the terminally ill;
and the creation of a multicultural hos-
pice service for Christians, Muslims and
Jews, drawing on the diversity of the
Detroit area to help break down barri-
ers in the Partnership 2000 region.
The cost of the project is estimated to
be about $250,000. It is anticipated that
Kupat Cholim and Ha'Emek Medical
Center will fund the hospice after the
first two years.
There are 11 hospices in Israel, ac-
cording to Rabbi Freedman. But, the
rabbi added, the hospice system seems
to be based on an old system of care.
"I think Dr. Finn benefited from un-
derstanding the relationships between
Jews and Christians and Muslims in Is-
rael," said Rabbi Freedman. "He really
got to understand the area."

❑

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