Abstract
Each prefectural government must formulate a Regional Health Care Plan (RHCP) which will be enforced from 2013 to 2017. During this period, in Health Care Regions (HCRs) where the population is less than 200,000, the inflow rate of inpatients is less than 20%, and the outflow rate of inpatients is more than 20%, each prefecture is required to reconsider the size of any such secondary HCR. They should consider natural conditions such as geographical characteristics, social conditions such as traffic, patient flow of each area, access time to core hospitals, et cetera. In this study, we analyzed the situation of the Kiso secondary HCR of Nagano prefecture, based on the 2010 Diagnosis Procedure Combination (DPC) data that was distributed by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. According to a Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis, the Kiso HCR is self-sufficient for most emergency care and cancer treatments, even though this area is classified as a rural HCR. As this research indicates, DPC data is a useful resource for HCR planning.
