Abstract
The present study aimed to ascertain the conditions of inpatients in acute care wards, hospitals for community-based care, recovery phase rehabilitation wards, and recuperation wards, as well as the conditions of users of services provided by nursing care hospitals, geriatric health services facilities, senior citizens welfare service facilities and home-visit nursing stations. For acute care wards, patient conditions were collected from the H-file of the Diagnosis Procedure Combination (DPC) data, and for all the other institutions, patient conditions were collected from questionnaires based on items A and B for the Severity of a Patient’s Condition and Extent of a Patient’s Need for Medical/Nursing Care tool. As a result, in item A indicating nursing care related to the medical treatments received by the patient, the proportion of patients with low scores was the highest to lowest in this order: recovery phase rehabilitation wards<nursing homes for the elderly<nursing care hospitals<home-visit nursing stations<recuperation wards<acute care wards. Similarly, in item B indicating the level of patient independence and state of activity, the proportion of patients with low scores was the highest to lowest in the following order: acute care wards<home-visit nursing stations<recovery phase rehabilitation wards<hospitals for community-based care<geriatric health service facilities<nursing homes for the elderly<nursing care hospitals<and recuperation wards, suggesting that patent conditions are involved in clinical specialization. Evaluating patient conditions enable the determination of the amount of medical resources required in each clinical specialization, the development of which can be expected to be reflected in the payment system for medical services.
