Abstract
Tokyo has many outlying islands, with island clinics and hospitals. These institutions must provide care for diverse patients, including emergency treatment and the management of chronic disease patients. Given the limited medical resources on outlying islands, however, it is sometimes impossible to provide complete medical care for serious illnesses, and for cases that are difficult to diagnose or treat. For that reason, there is a system for helicopter transport of urgent and severe cases to support hospitals. Patients are also frequently referred to support hospitals for diagnosis and treatment in specialized fields, even for non-emergency cases. Thus proper coordination between island clinics and support hospitals is absolutely critical. The outlying islands and support hospitals are separated by time and space, and this poses various obstacles to the transport and admissions of island patients. The resolution of these obstacles will require efforts by both the island clinics and the support hospitals. In particular, the ideal approach is to place coordinating doctors at the support hospitals to serve as pipelines between the island clinics and hospital departments. This system elevates the support hospitals’roles and functions as support hospitals, and should be pursued as a future issue and goal for these institutions.
