Speedy medical care
In Japan, the waiting time to see a doctor at a medical institution is extremely short, with 55.6% of patients being admitted within one week of being diagnosed with the need for hospitalization. Data shows that the waiting time from when a patient arrives at a hospital to when they are admitted is less than one hour in about 70% of cases, regardless of the size of the hospital, and of these, the most common time is less than 15 minutes in 26.1%.※ 1 In addition, Japan has an extremely high number of hospital beds per patient, with 13.3 hospital beds per 1,000 people, more than twice as many as France and approximately five times as many as the United States and the United Kingdom*2. Furthermore, the number of CT scanners in Japan is 111.5 per 1 million people, and MRI scanners is 55.2, both of which are ranked first in the world, while PET scanners are 4.6 per 1 million people, ranking third*3. ※ 3 These factors make speedy medical care possible.
※ 1 Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare “2017 Medical Care Behavior Survey” ※ 2 OECD Health Statistics 2015 ※ 3 OECD2017
High level and standardized medical service quality and safety
Japan’s medical care is highly safe and standardized. For example, the 30-day mortality rate after hospitalization for ischemic cerebral infarction is the lowest in the world. Another example of this is the extremely high 5-year survival rate per 100,000 people for all cancers.*4 It is also noteworthy that safe medical care can be provided even to the very elderly. The 30-day mortality rates for elderly patients aged 80 years or older who underwent right hemicolectomy, low anterior rectal resection, and pancreaticoduodenectomy in Japan and the United States were 1.5%/4.5%, 1.1%/3.1%, and 2.0%/4.2%, respectively. These data also show that Japan’s medical care is safe.*5
※ 4 OECD Health Statistics 2015 ※ 5 Medicine Vol.94, No.49,Dec. 2015
Development of preventive medicine and cutting-edge medical care with diversity
There are medical institutions providing advanced medical care, including university hospitals, all over the country, where people can receive health checkups at reasonable prices and undergo cutting-edge tests such as PET cancer screening, MRI brain imaging, blood cancer risk prediction tests, and dementia prediction tests. Japan has established an environment for preventive medicine based on health maintenance, early detection, and early diagnosis, and is supporting a super-aging society unparalleled in the world from a medical perspective. Cutting-edge medical technology, especially minimally invasive medical care, offers a wide range of options to meet patient needs, including endoscopic diagnosis and treatment of various diseases, catheter surgery for the brain and heart, and robotic surgery.
For example, approximately 5,600 surgical robots, including the Da Vinci, have been introduced worldwide to date. Of these, approximately 750 have been introduced in Asia, with Japan having the second-largest number of such robots in the world, with roughly half of those being introduced in Japan. Genomic medicine also allows for the selection of anti-cancer drugs, making a wide variety of anti-cancer drug treatments possible. Furthermore, cutting-edge medical research, such as regenerative medicine, is being promoted, and a pioneering pharmaceutical review system has been established with the aim of quickly providing cutting-edge therapeutic drugs.
The medical services provided in Japan are also open to foreign patients. “MEC Health Tourism” provided by MEC Japan acts as an intermediary between foreign patients and medical institutions in Japan, offering medical tourism that supports health checkups, examinations, treatment, and rehabilitation, as well as wellness tourism services that contribute to the physical and mental health of patients prior to these.