Top officials at Haifa hospital arrested for patient abuse

Haifa police arrested three senior officials at the city’s Elisha Hospital on Tuesday morning on suspicion of involvement in a case of ongoing patient abuse at the facility, a privately run medical center.

Four other hospital workers were arrested last week in connection with the case, and are suspected of physically abusing a comatose woman during her treatment. A total of nine people have been arrested in the scandal.

The alleged abuse was captured by a hidden camera installed surreptitiously in the patient’s room after family members noticed suspicious wounds on the body of the woman, and hospital staff explained the damage as side effects of drugs given to the patient.

The men were filmed, during the course of check-ups on the woman, treating her roughly, pulling her hair and in at least one case, slapping her on the face.

The reported victim is already the subject of a civil lawsuit brought by her family against the medical facility, who say that the woman, while being treated for lupus at Elisha Hospital in 2008, experienced a cardiac arrest due to medical malpractice and subsequently fell into a long-term coma.