Soroka Medical Center


Soroka University Medical Center, a part of the Clalit Health Services Group, is the general hospital of Beersheba, Israel, it serves as the central hospital of the region and provides medical services to approximately one million residents of the South, from Kiryat Gat and Ashkelon to Eilat. Soroka has 1,191 hospital beds, and is spread over in the center of Beer-Sheva.
Soroka provides medical care to all communities in the region, including Negev Bedouins. It is a teaching hospital affiliated with the faculty of Health Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, whose campus is adjacent to the hospital. During times of conflict in the South, Soroka has served as an emergency center for casualties.
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History

Foundation and early history

Following the independence of Israel, the Medical Corps established a temporary military hospital in one of the former Ottoman government buildings in Beersheva. A year later, the hospital was transferred to a British government compound, where it was run by the Hadassah Medical Association and named after Dr. Chaim Yassky.
In 1949, Clalit Health Fund of the Hebrew Workers in Eretz Israel opened a clinic in the city to serve citizens who were members of the Histadrut. This clinic required hospital services for continued treatment. The nearest hospital was the Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot.
Hadassah was not in a position to expand its operations due to budgetary constraints as Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem was then under construction.
David Ben-Gurion proposed that the government should establish a hospital in the Negev rather than Hadassah or the Histadrut, but the Health Ministry did not have sufficient funding.
David Tuviyahu, mayor of Beersheva, joined the effort to establish a larger, more spacious and modern hospital. For this purpose, he met with various individuals, among them Moshe Soroka, chairman of the Clalit Health Services. Soroka expressed his willingness in principle for the Histadrut Health Fund to establish a hospital, but Minister of Health Yosef Serlin, who aspired to reduce the activity of the fund and transfer it to the state, objected to this idea.
In August 1955, Dov Begun, representative of the Histadrut in the United States, convinced the president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, David Dubinsky, to donate US$1 million toward establishing a hospital in the Negev that would commemorate the organization's name.
The groundbreaking ceremony took place on 23 July 1956. The hospital building was designed by architects Arieh Sharon and Benjamin Idelson.
In October 1959, the opening ceremony of the Central Hospital of the Negev was held. At first, the hospital contained several departments: the General Surgery Department, two internal medicine departments, the Orthopedic Department, the Cardiology Institute, and the Radiology Institute. Later, additional departments were opened.

1970s: New name

After Moshe Soroka, the director of Clalit Health Organization in the 1950s, had died in 1972, the hospital was renamed in his memory.

21st century

In 2018, Shlomi Codish was named director-general of the hospital, replacing Ehud Davidson, who held the post for five years.
On 19 June 2025, during the Iran–Israel war, the hospital was struck by an Iranian missile, causing extensive damage and injuring about 65 people.

The campus

The hospital covers an area of 286 dunams, with a constructed area of more than 200,000 square meters and includes 30 buildings.

Activity

Soroka Medical Center has over 40 inpatient departments and 1,191 hospital beds. In addition to the hospital departments, there are dozens of other units that provide services to hospitalized and ambulatory patients, in the Emergency Medicine Department, institutes, and outpatient clinics.
Soroka's Department of Emergency Medicine, with the largest volume of activity in Israel, is the leading such department in the country according to a health care survey on service and quality conducted by the Ministry of Health.
In Soroka's delivery rooms more than 17,000 babies are born every year, an exceptionally high number in international terms.
In 2023, 32,400 surgeries were performed at the hospital and 100,000 hospitalizations took place. There were over 600,000 visits to the outpatient clinics.
Soroka has some 5,700 employees, including more than 900 doctors, 2,000 nurses, 800 health workers and 500 administrative employees.
Soroka Medical Center provides medical services to more than one million residents of the Negev, who reside in 60% of the geographical area of the country. Unique populations cared for at Soroka include Bedouins, who make up a third of the population, and large groups of immigrants from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union.

Standards

University Medical Center

Soroka Medical Center is a university medical center that maintains close ties with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The hospital staff partners in training the students. Approximately 1,000 students study at the hospital annually. The campus of BGU's Faculty of Health Sciences is located in the hospital compound.
Many clinical trials approved by the Helsinki Committee are conducted at Soroka. As of 2023, the committee is chaired by Prof. Eitan Lunenfeld.
A center for clinical research operates at Soroka, leading and promoting research with hospital staff and colleagues outside of the hospital in Israel and abroad, sometimes in cooperation with BGU.
Every year, approximately 300 new studies are approved at the hospital, and some 600 articles on research of clinical and managerial significance have been published in the scientific literature.