Column Finance and the Social Security System 2019.01.22
【Aging, safety net and fiscal crisis in Japan】No.148: Negative spiral of the decline in hospitals with a pediatrics/obstetrics/gynecology unit and depopulation
The decline in hospitals with a pediatrics and/or obstetrics/gynecology unit is accelerating. As shown in Table 1, the number of general hospitals decreased by 18.5% from 9,022 in 1990 to 7,353 in 2017. The number of hospitals with a pediatrics and/or obstetrics/gynecology unit has seen a sharper decline. As a result, the number of hospitals with a pediatrics unit as a proportion of the number of general hospitals fell from 45.7% to 35.3%. The proportion of hospitals with an obstetrics/gynecology unit also fell from 27.3% to 17.9%.
This is because the number of births has sharply decreased (Figure. 1). A young couple does not choose to live in an area where hospitals with pediatrics/obstetrics/gynecology units have disappeared. Therefore, the depopulation in such an area accelerates. One way to solve this is to guarantee access to pediatrics/obstetrics/gynecology units by integrating hospitals responsible for those medical care services to serve a region with a population of about 500,000.
Table 1: Number of general hospitals with pediatrics and/or obstetrics/gynecology units
Source: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare
Figure 1: Number of births
Source: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare