Shaare Zedek Medical Center - Facilities

Facilities

Shaare Zedek is located on an 11.5-acre (47,000 m2) campus between the neighborhoods of Bayit VeGan in the south and Ramat Beit HaKerem in the north, east of Mount Herzl in southwest Jerusalem. The hospital has 750 beds and treats over 500,000 patients a year in its in-patient and out-patient facilities. As terrorist attacks in Jerusalem reached a peak in 2001-2004, Shaare Zedek treated more victims than any other hospital in Israel. The hospital's trauma unit located within its Weinstock Department of Emergency Medicine on the Fanya Gottesfeld Heller Floor has become a model for emergency medicine and handling large-scale mass casualty incidents. The hospital campus, completed in 1979, consists of ten interconnected buildings with the central structure being a ten-story building which houses the in-patient departments. The bottom three floors are located underground so as to allow the hospital to continue to operate even during war time under the threat of missile strike. The Department of Emergency Medicine, the Wohl Surgical Operating Complex inaugurated in 2010, the Pharmacy and critical supply areas are all located in this underground portion and other areas of the hospital can be evacuated to this portion when necessary.

Shaare Zedek is well known for its extensive decontamination facilities capable of responding to terrorist attacks. The hospital acts as the on-call facility for the entire Jerusalem area to respond to chemical warfare attacks. Shaare Zedek's decontamination facilities served as an inspiration for New York's largest similar facility at the New York Downtown Hospital.