2008 Volume 20 Issue 1 Pages 5-13
Japanese Government data are under drastic reform for the first time after 60 years. In May 2007, the Statistics Act was revised fundamentally and a Statistics Commission was set up under the Cabinet Office. This paper describes the background of the new Statistics Act and its purpose, and the roles of the Statistics Commission.
Japanese health data have been criticized that they are not constructed in a systematic way and lack the conceptual framework similar to the System of National Accounts (SNA). The central indicator of various health data, Japan's National Medical Expenditure, is not comprehensive and does not reflect the current health system and expenditure situation. Since 2000, OECD has provided an international standard to estimate the health expenditure, called a System of Health Accounts (SHA) In place of National Medical Expenditure, it is proposed that SHA should be the central health data as most OECD countries have adopted.
