The call was for a young man having a heart attack in an apartment near Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv.
Dr. Michael Block, an American anesthesiologist, was riding with a Magen David Adom ambulance crew alongside his son, Evan, an EMT. The team started an IV, called ahead to Ichilov, and rushed the patient to the hospital.
They didn’t take him to the emergency room. He went straight to the catheterization lab.
“He would have died had we not gotten there so fast,” Michael said. “The way that it was organized was just incredible. It doesn’t happen in [the US].”
Jeff Covitz had a similar reaction when he came to Israel.
A paramedic captain with the San Francisco Fire Department, Jeff has spent years working on mass-casualty training and policy. He knew Israel handled major emergencies differently. He wanted to see how.
“We run out of ambulances in San Francisco on your average Tuesday,” he said. “How do they get 30 ambulances to the scene in 10 minutes? That’s amazing.”
He was particularly struck by the speed. In an incident with 20 casualties, Jeff said, Israeli teams can sometimes triage, treat, and transport everyone from the scene in under 15 minutes.
“In San Francisco, it would take us the better part of an hour,” he said.
“I always knew the Israeli way was better, but I just wanted to know exactly why it’s better and how they do it. What’s their secret?”
Jeff went looking for the answer through Magen David Adom’s International Seminar on Emergency Response, which brings doctors, paramedics, and other medical professionals from around the world to Israel for an inside look at the country’s emergency medical system.
In the US, EMS is largely local, and hospital care is highly specialized. Israel has a national emergency medical service that can move personnel, ambulances, and equipment quickly. During a mass-casualty event, hospitals can also shift their operations to take on large numbers of patients.
This year’s participants will also take part in a simulation at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center, offering a firsthand look at how an Israeli hospital prepares for a sudden influx of casualties.
Some of that would be difficult to replicate in the United States. Other ideas, Jeff thought, were worth bringing back.
But some of the most memorable lessons came from simply talking to the people who had been there.
During a visit to southern Israel, Jeff met MDA paramedics who responded on Oct. 7. They told him about handling casualties at seven or eight locations at the same time, with terrorists still on the ground.
“An MCI [mass casualty incident] on a good day is finding order in chaos,” Jeff said. “They were doing it across seven to eight different locations while there were roving bands of terrorists murdering everyone they encountered. “There’s no training for that. They just made it up as they went along.”
This year's program will include lessons from Israel’s recent wars, mass-casualty simulations, and visits to MDA’s Sderot station and sites in southern Israel.
For Michael, who first attended the seminar in 2019, the experience ended up leading somewhere he hadn’t expected.
His son later volunteered with MDA, and the two eventually worked ambulance shifts together, including the heart attack call near Ichilov.
Then, after Oct. 7, Michael came back.
His parents were Holocaust survivors. His father was the only member of his family to survive Auschwitz, Dora, and Bergen-Belsen. Michael felt strongly that, as a Jewish physician, he should use the skills he had.
He traveled to Israel three times to volunteer as an anesthesiologist at Ichilov while Israeli doctors were being called into military reserve duty.
“As a Jewish physician, my parents were Holocaust survivors,” he said. “I really wanted to be in a Jewish state in Israel and just work side by side and take care of Israelis, Jews and non-Jews and everybody. “MDA really gave me that connection.”
Michael thinks emergency physicians and trauma surgeons are obvious candidates for the seminar, but says they aren’t the only ones who would benefit.
“It could be anybody who’s a doctor,” he said. “If you have an interest in prehospital care and emergency medical services, that’s who should go.”
Jeff apparently agrees. A Jewish affinity group he helped establish for San Francisco firefighters and other city employees is already funding another participant this year, with the goal of sending one or two people annually.
Magen David Adom’s 11th International Seminar on Emergency Response will take place Dec. 13-18, 2026. The $1,750 fee includes five nights of hotel accommodation, two meals per day, transportation, and program activities. Airfare and health insurance are not included.
For information or to apply, contact Vicki Angel at vickia@mda.org.il
Written in collaboration with MDA