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.

In this study. we assessed the effect of Order Entry System on hospital productivity and efficiency for inpatient care by using municipal hospital panel data in Japan. We developed hospital production function for inpatient care. which had annual discharge cases per bed as a dependent variable. Then 3 kinds of stochastic frontier analyses were applied to the production function to estimate technical efficiency score. Also we examined the effect of hospital characteristics including installation of Order Entry System on the hospital productivity and technical efficiency.
As the result，we found positive effect of the installation of Order Entry System on hospital production frontier shift and technical efficiency improvement. This effect was not related to the relocation or renewal of hospital facilities. Among 3 models，true fixed effect model showed the highest mean value estimate and the narrowest deviation estimate of technical efficiency score. However，the efficiency score of true fixed effect model was not correlated with the scores of other 2 models.
These results suggested the possible positive effect of Order Entry System on hospital production frontier shift and technical efficiency improvement for inpatient care.

The purpose of this study is to clarify the GHQ's philosophy of medical policies, and to get fundamental knowledge of the development of the history of the formation of the Japanese health service system after world war II. This study also intends to take up several health service policies that GHQ followed during the occupation period: the reforms of the medical education such as the introduction of the practical training system (an internship), the setting up of national board examination for medical doctors, the introduction of the model hospital plan, and setting up of medical school inspectors. These policies are concerned with the improvement of medical doctor's quality. For this study, the records we depended mainly upon the PHW (Public Health and Welfare Section) documents of the GHQ/SCAP held at the National Diet Library in Japan. In particular, we paid much attention to the negotiations between Japanese public welfare officials and the GHQ representatives on the basis of the minutes of the Council on Medical Education.
We would like to point out the following three conclusions. In the first place, GHQ carried out the reform of the health service system on the basis of the modern medical science (modern medical philosophy and skill) and paid much attention to the intensification of the clinical medicine. In the second place, GHQ aims to gain independence of the public administration of welfare. GHQ thought that the purpose of the public administration of welfare should lie in the protection of people's health, not to the national objective accomplishment. In the final place, GHQ precisely looking into the pre-war health service system in Japan, and dividing it between the abolishing and continuing parts, rebuilt the new system for the post war Japan.