Deregulation on drug prescription term to outpatients was basically enforced except in some cases in April 2002. A research was conducted to clarify impacts on the quality of medication service and management of medical institutions by this change.

Drug prescription term was prolonged in about 60% of clinics and 67% of hospitals. The main reasons of prolonged prescription term were patient's stable condition of symptoms and patient's request. Meanwhile, about 50% of physicians in clinics and 40% of physicians in hospitals who prolonged prescription term recognized problems (i.e. patient's irregular visiting for consultation, non-compliance of medication, deterioration of laboratory values).

The study results also implied that this change gave negative impact on management of clinics and hospitals. Physicians pointed that they should absolutely consider patients' condition of symptoms, patient's ability of medication compliance, proper frequency of regular consultation, and quality assurance of drugs to build desirable medication service to outpatients.

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.

The aim of this survey is to discuss the results of empirical research between medical care and prevention, and its problems. Public Health, the great contribution to health care research, evaluate its policy concerning about the substitutability between medical care and prevention. On the other hand, Economics, mainly econometrics research, set two behavior models on medical care and prevention, afterwards evaluate its policy. There is a great difference in method and policy thought between Public Health and Economics. In accomplishing sophisticated policy evaluation, needs of further research is in this area.