2004 Volume 15 Pages 23-35
It's generally believed that the hospitalization for nor-medical reasons wastes valuable medical resources and increases the national medical expenditures. Consequently, it has been proposed that we can cut down a lot of cost through shifting the hospitalization for non-medical reasons to the nursing-care insurance from the medical insurance.
The purpose of this article is to clarify the cost of the hospitalization for non-medical reasons. The main feature of the analysis is that it doesn't take account of the hospitalization for non-medical reasons for 6 months after hospitalized, because inpatients need medical treatment service during this period.
The main results are as follows. First, the hospitalization for non-medical reasons measured at the hospitalization days becomes about 7-17% of all hospitalization days. Second, the cost is about 0.8-1.2 trillion yen and doesn't reach 5% of the national medical expenditures.
