Quality
The quality of medical care and safety-related capacities of hospitals are assessed and certified,
on a voluntary-basis. The Japan Council for Quality Health Care (JCQHC) was founded in 1995
to implement third party accreditation of hospitals. JCQHC sets indicators and a monitoring
system for service delivery progress in hospitals. However, JCQHC is a Public Interest
Incorporated Foundation and does not have the right to require hospitals to take part in the
accreditation program. As of May 2011, 2965 (about 30% of all hospitals) hospitals had applied to
the program and 2518 hospitals passed the JCQHC evaluation to be accredited.
In terms of patient safety and medical errors, a "no fault" system is used to ensure that clients are
adequately and promptly compensated, and that the quality issues are dealt with in a problemsolving,
continuous improvement approach. The 2006 Medical Care Act Amendment emphasizes
quality of care and patient safety and patient safety support centres was established in each
prefecture to handle complaints and consultations concerning medical treatment and to provide
advice and implement patient safety trainings to administrators and providers of medical
institutions. The Act on the Protection of Personal Information (2005) legally obliges patients to be
informed and medical records to be disclosed. This facilitates collaboration between patients and
medical professionals over treatment. Advanced certification system for medical staff such as
doctor and nurse is also current focus topic to improve patient safety and quality of care.
Government aims to increase the number of advanced certification medical staff. For example,
nurse specialist for cancer was started from 1994 when there were 4 nurses trained in this
speciality area, but by 2012, the number of trained cancer specialist nurses reached 327.
A public opinion survey on health-care policy was done in January 2010, with an overall response
rate of 62%. Figure 2 shows comparison with a similar survey in 2006 with the same set of
questions. The 2010 results suggest that over recent years, public satisfaction with the decisionmaking
process of the health-care system has decreased, while public satisfaction with the
medical services and treatments has increased.