Use of Clinical Indicators in the Municipal Hospitals in Japan: An
Analysis Based on a Nationwide Questionnaire Survey concerning Medical
Information Management
Abstract
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summarizes and analyzes the unpublished portion of the 2017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%).