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Clinical Indicators in the Municipal Hospitals in Japan_201118b.docx (195.08 kB)
Download fileUse of Clinical Indicators in the Municipal Hospitals in Japan: An Analysis Based on a Nationwide Questionnaire Survey concerning Medical Information Management
We conducted a questionnaire survey of public hospitals across the country of Japan in order to analyze the issues and challenges concerning personal data protection faced by medical institutions managed by local municipalities in Japan. The reason for targeting public hospitals is that they are more closely related to the regional medical care plan. Questionnaires were sent to all municipal hospitals (887 hospitals with 20 or more beds that are members of the Japan Municipal Hospital Association: JMHA). Key parts of the findings were published as research material in another journal in 2018. This paper summarizes and analyzes the unpublished portion of the 2017 questionnaire survey by the authors. The analysis of the results focuses on the characteristics of the municipal hospitals surveyed and the use of clinical indicators compared by the size of hospitals. While many small and medium-sized hospitals use a common form of consent for the use of personal information, and many large hospitals have specific consent forms for each department (26.4%). Concerning primal method for disposing or deleting personal information, the most chosen item among small and medium-sized hospitals was the incineration or dissolution method (62.5%); the percentage of contractors outsourcing was relatively high in large hospitals (39.5%). In addition, we found the differences between large and small/medium hospitals concerning the use of the clinical indicators. The most used indicator is average length of hospitalization and the rate of hospital bed utilization (80.4%).
Funding
Funding from the Regional Economic Research Cooperation Council supported this study. In addition, this article was supported by a subsidy for English editing services provided by the affiliated university.
History
Declaration of conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest to declare.Corresponding author email
moteki@hiroshima-u.ac.jpLead author country
- Japan
Lead author job role
- Higher Education Faculty 4-yr College
Lead author institution
Hiroshima UniversityHuman Participants
- Yes
Ethics statement
All the respondents of our survey were public hospital officials in charge of information management who were well informed about the aims of the survey and participated voluntarily. The Committee of Regional Economic Research Cooperation Council approved the survey design and there were no ethical concerns raised.Comments
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