| [ Summary ] |
Since the Japanese economy is on the verge of collapse, a political control mechanism on expenses for social welfare is an important subject. Though an automatic increase in medical expenses has been considered to be inevitable, a steep reduction in medical expenses has been carried out twice for a variety of expenses related to social welfare. These have been achieved through revisions of medical fee payment system as determined by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. An increase in the number of hemodialysed patients and an accompaning abrupt increase in medical expense for end-stage renal disease has attracted much attention. Based on these findings, medical expenses for hemodialysis were drastically reduced. Hemodialysis is a procedure that is done in the same manner over and over. Therefore, what is termed "a fixed payment system" has been introduced, for this type of treatment, including fees for laboratory examinations related to individual dialysis sessions for outpatients. There is the possibility that everything related to hemodialysis, such as dialysers and medicines, will covered by this system. At this point, an effective, high quality hemodialysis method should he selected from a variety of methods, to help patients, and this modality should also seen as being be beneficial for the stable management of medical institutions with a minimum of effort on the part of doctors. |