As United Hatzalah prepares to celebrate twenty years of lifesaving at its annual Sukkot concert, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman joined United Hatzalah Founder and President Eli Beer for a visit to one of the organization’s newest approaches to providing medical care. Inside the Ruderman Mobile Emergency Care Clinic in Jerusalem, the story of United Hatzalah’s growth over the past two decades can be seen in a relatively simple idea: bring medical care to where it is needed.
The clinic, stationed outside Jerusalem’s YMCA during the Sukkot holiday, provides tourists and residents with access to doctors and paramedics for primary medical care without requiring a trip to a hospital emergency room.
For visitors spending the holiday far from their regular physicians and familiar health care systems, that access can make an enormous difference.
But the mobile clinic also reflects something larger about United Hatzalah.
For twenty years, the organization has worked to challenge assumptions about how emergency medical care should be delivered in Israel. The idea that inspired United Hatzalah was straightforward. When someone is injured or becomes critically ill, the first medical responder should not necessarily be the person driving the closest ambulance. It should be the trained medic who can reach that patient fastest.
That philosophy helped create a national network of more than 8,600 volunteer EMTs, paramedics, and doctors who respond from within their own communities, often arriving on ambucycles, e-bikes, ambucars, or other specially designed emergency vehicles within minutes.
Today, that same strategy continues to guide the organization.
Sometimes that means placing a volunteer medic around the corner from an emergency. Sometimes it means using motorcycles, bicycles, drones or specialized rescue units to overcome obstacles that delay conventional emergency response. And sometimes, as with the Ruderman Mobile Emergency Care Clinic, it means bringing the clinic itself directly to the people who may need it.
During his visit, Friedman toured the mobile facility together with Beer and saw the equipment and medical capabilities available to patients during the holiday.
The visit comes as United Hatzalah prepares to mark its twentieth anniversary at its annual Sukkot concert in Jerusalem.
Twenty years after a small group of volunteers set out to reach medical emergencies faster, United Hatzalah has grown into a nationwide emergency medical organization. Yet the principle behind the organization remains remarkably unchanged.
We saw the need and found a way to fulfill it. All the while making sure that when someone requires medical help, care is never farther away than it needs to be.
United Hatzalah is changing the face of pre-hospital emergency medical care one emergency at a time.
