Biography
Pesach Shvartzman is one of Israel’s leading family physicians and is a prominent expert in pain control and palliative medicine. He completed his residency in family medicine in Afula and established the country’s first Department of Family Medicine under Clalit Health Services. In 1987, he moved to the Negev and founded the Department of Family Medicine in Clalit Health Services’ Southern District.
Shvartzman has been the Director of Clalit’s “Tet” Clinic in Beer-Sheva for three decades. He set up palliative care services in the southern region and in this framework the “Home Hospice” service was established that supports patients dying at home. He was also the founder of the Outpatient Pain Clinic in the southern district. He is a palliative care consultant in the Pediatric, Internal Medicine and Oncology Departments at Soroka University Medical Center.
He also established Edy’s House – Ma’agan Beer-Sheva Community Cancer Care Center, a community support center for cancer patients and their families and is also its chairman. Edy’s House operates with the help of grants from the Freedman family of New York and the Israel Cancer Association. Edy’s House was renamed recently after co-founder the late Edy Freedman.
Through the years Shvartzman has taught thousands of students and residents, many of whom have risen to prominence around the country. In addition to teaching, he set up the National School of Pain for Family Physicians, initiated a course on pain at BGU’s Faculty of Health Sciences, and for many years was the director of the school for continuing education.
In 1996 he founded the Sial Research Center for Family Medicine and Primary Care, the only one of its kind in the country. Under its auspices, dozens of research projects are carried out and family physicians receive support in planning and carrying out research.
He is currently a member of the Public Committee to expand the basket of health services from the Ministry of Health and serves as an editor of the Israel Journal of Family Practice and a pain and palliative medicine journal.
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