Abstract
All Japanese national hospitals and sanatoria are required to perform policy-based medical services, one of which is the medical treatment of intractable diseases. We investigated the catchment area of the Department of Clinical Neurology (DCN) of the National Iwate Hospital (NIH) and the current medical services of the area, to assess whether the hospital can successfully provide an intractable neurological diseases (IND)-based service.
The catchment area of DCN-NIH's medical service for IND, which was determined by the distribution of the dwelling places of patients with IND who were treated at DCN-NIH, was within a radius of about 30km of the NIH. This area extended over Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, and contained a total population of 515, 000. In the area, in total, 20.1% of patients with IND were being treated at DCN-NIH, and if the area is restricted to within a radius of 15km of the NIH, the percentage increases to 49.1% of patients. No hospitals and clinics within and around this medical service area were expected to compete with NIH as providers of medical service for IND.
These findings suggest that the number of patients who were treated at DCN-NIH may markedly increase when DCN-NIH increases its medical service for IND, and are positive encouragement for DCN-NIH to commit to concentrating on medical services for IND.
