NATIONAL
89-year-old woman dies after 30 hospitals refuse to accept her in Osaka

Excellent idea! Go to every hospital in your area and register and get a check-up! That way those hospitals will have to come up with another excuse for refusing to accept you!

 

Perhaps suspending their licenses to practice medicine and accept patients for a couple of months, would help show them what there job responsibilities are about. this isn't acceptable at all. Over here in the states, criminal charges might be leveled.

 

Step 1: New law, no hospital can refuse a patient. No Doctor can refuse a patient.
Step 2: Since most-everyone has gov't health care in Japan, all medical records on a closed computer intranet available at every health care facility. No surprise allergies to medications, etc.
Step 3: Every City, every region sets a system of trauma centers; the worst cases (Level One) go to big hospital A, the less-serious cases (Level Two) go to local hospitals B-through-D, cuts and scrapes E - Z. No more hunting for a hospital, have clear guidelines about which type of patient goes where.
Step 4: If there are Doctor shortages, put systematic distrust of foreigners aside and hire some damn Doctors (and treat them right)!

 

I don't think it's the doctors that are at fault. It's the entire system that is messed up. From what I see, doctors don't even hear about these people because of how things are administrated. Basically the receptionists would reject people before they even get to contact the doctors or something like that from what I gather from the article. This is truly a stupid way to do things, because it should be a doctor who determines who is treated and who is rejected in times of emergency, not receptionists or administrators. I can understand the low doctor count, the crunch and stuff, but I truly can't believe that every single doctor was doing surgery or something, someone must have been just doing something simple like checking up on someone's blood pressure that a nurse was doing, and if it was somehow done more efficiently maybe he could have been checking up on the lady's condition before turning her away.

If the article was "30 doctors turned woman away because she was initially in a stable condition" then that would be fine. She was fine and actually suddenly became ill, no one is to blame. But instead the article is "30 hospitals refuse to accept her in Osaka," which means real doctors never even got the chance to assess her well being. It's a pathetic system. The entire system is out of whack. If it's money, the gov't should realize that nothing is more important than a person's health/life. Pour some more money into it.

 

Those steps make sense.

 

One interesting thing that health care professionals in my country are setting up is some sort of system that will monitor the amount of patients that are admitted into health centers. This would probably be a valuable asset in Japan. If ambulances can check to see how full each hospital or medical center is, they can simply head towards the one with the least amount of patient traffic (so i guess if the other hospitals are at 200% capacity, then you would go to the one that is at 120% capacity to even out the workload). This way, whichever hospital is being contacted will know that their hospital has the lowest workload compared to others, even if they are already past capacity, other hospitals are worse. They can't reject and will simply have to accomodate. Basically this would reduce the wait-time overall and force hospitals to accept people because they can't argue that they are full, because other hospitals might be even more full and they can't lie about it because it is all present in one system.

I never gave much thought about this system (i don't think it's set up yet, it'll be ready in a couple of years), but with how things are run in Japan, honestly, I think my country is one step ahead. I'm glad i live here and not in Japan now.

 

Problems with numbers of doctors surely has something to do with all this but from all the stories Japan uses the number of doctors it has very badly because the triage system in Japan seems to be well, crap. Also about the internal medicine doctor refusing to bandage a cut - something just occurred to me - Japan is known for being very very heavily regulated. Not in terms of actual useful regulation for safety but regulation to earn more money for the bureaucracy and other special interests. It is possible now that I think about it that that doctor may have literally been *unable* to do so because the "rules" won't allow him. So part of the issue may be not just be a case of neglect and inability to make reforms but actual active meddling in the system to make things inefficient.

 

don't these reports get to the government? they have to pass some kind of regulation about this

 

What`s the crap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Unbelievable!!!!!!!!!We all know that health system her is 3rd world level, far behind other countries. I`m sure most of "high profile" doctors were on holiday and only students took care of patients. I went twice to Juntendo Byoin and will never ever step there again. Each time they made mistake. The only place I go is foreign clinics and they recommend real Japanese doctors they cooperate with. Had always good experience.

 

Answer 1. Then we would have another sh...t in health care called Japan. It would be like this: you broken hand ask for help and oncologist who have no idea about surgery will take care of you because he/she was just in hospital and you cannot be refused.

Answer 2. I went to dentist and told him I`m allergic to penicillin, which I wrote very clear on my first visit sheet. After all I received medicine for my tooth which....contained penicillin. It was my "intuition?" very strong warning in my head telling me to Google name of this tablets before I take even one. I save myself. My wife called them and shut at them and treated like little babies. They apologized, yes, this is what they used to do in this country. Never will be back there again.

 

“We all know that health system her is 3rd world level, far behind other countries.”
“The only place I go is foreign clinics; Then we would have another sh...t in health care called Japan; Never will be back there again.”

Have you considered getting back to your “more advanced European” country and staying there? It’s plainly clear that Japain is the exact opposite of your highly superior and advanced “European” country. Why are you staying then, if you don’t mind me asking? Also, could you please let me know which “more advanced European” country you come from as I would like to move there ‘meself’? Our old NHS is bursting by the seams, patients being transferred to France for lack of beds, doctors are over-worked, mis-diagnosing is not uncommon, and waiting lists for a dentist could take up to 8 months and so on and so forth.

Thus I would appreciate if you told me where you’re from because I really want to move to your country. As for Japain, it’s well known that Japainese are incapable and natural born imbeciles; thus you shouldn’t expect any decent health care from them, should you?

My Japanese girlfriend tells me she left Japain in order to escape their hospitals; filthy and basically 3rd world. Little wonder Japain has the world’s highest mortality rate, all on account of those incapable Japainese butchers, a.k.a doctors!

 

...care of before!

Then they do not deserve to be in business!!

 

It becomes clear that a regulation system is missing. This system exists in basically every developed country. Its role is to dispatch patients to neighboring hospitals, according to trauma, work load, distance, etc... Every hospital (whether public or private) should be connected to this central dispatch system and give informations in real time to the ambulance.
What I understand from the japanese system is that ambulance calls the hospital instead of letting the central system "booking" an hospital.

 

Countermeasures = allowing immigration of foreign doctors.

 

Apparently some guy was badly injured in a traffic crash in Higashi-Osaka 1/2/08 and died while the hospitals and ambulances played "hot potato" with the patient.

Is it my imagination or are the vast majority of these cases in Kansai?

Everyday Japan allows this to go on without dealing with it outs its citizens at risk.