Research on establishment of Regional Medical Care Zones for efficient use of medical resources and by re-organization

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24659243
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Medical sociology
• Research Institution: Sapporo Medical University
• Principal Investigator: YAMAGUCHI Tokuzo 札幌医科大学, 附属総合情報センター, 研究員 (80423771)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): SHINMI Takahiko 札幌医科大学, 医学部, 助手 (10404584) ; OHNISHI Hirofumi 札幌医科大学, 医学部, 准教授 (20359996) ; TAKATSUKA Shintaro 札幌医科大学, 附属総合情報センター, 助教 (30457733) ; TATSUMI Haruyuki 札幌医科大学, 医学部, 教授 (90171719) ; MORI Mitsuru 札幌医科大学, 医学部, 教授 (50175634) ; TOHSE Noritsugu 札幌医科大学, 医学部, 教授 (80192657)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 二次医療圏 / レセプトデータ / 医療格差 / 医療機能 / 医療サービス / 社会構造の変化

Outline of Final Research Achievements

It has been commonly mentioned that Regional Medical Care Zones (RMCZs) have been established to provide equal opportunities to receive adequate medical care for people in communities. With a view to see if this is being truly realized, we gathered data from four cities and three towns on 19 million invoices to medical insurers for fiscal years 2011 through 2013 after proper anonymization. We created a database for statistical analysis after matching the data from two different insurance systems: National Health Insurance and Elder Healthcare System.
Our analysis revealed that there is an inequality in the capacity of RMCZs in providing care; namely, there is a large difference in the proportion of patients seeking medical care outside their own RMCZs according to whether or not each RMCZ has a tertiary medical care institution within. Moreover, there was a large imbalance in the amount of medical expenses among RMCZs.

Free Research Field

医療経済学