Okinawa Prefecture is a region without an organized primary emergency medical system, and the hospitals with emergency room handle primary emergency care. This unique emergency medical system has not been evaluated quantitatively. This study focused on the central and southern secondary medical areas of Okinawa Prefecture and aimed to evaluate them quantitatively by comparison with secondary medical areas exhibiting similar demographic characteristics, including population size, population density, and aging rates. We utilized indicators such as the number of ambulance acceptances obtained from open data, and non-parametric tests were performed for secondary and tertiary emergency medical hospitals within the target areas. We divided into two groups based on with or without primary emergency medical system, and a Mann-Whitney U test was performed. The number of after-hour visits per general bed (median, 32.8 vs. 26.7; p=0.015) and walk-in acceptances per general bed (median, 37.5 vs. 16.3; p=0.048) were significantly higher in the group without a primary emergency care system than those in the group with a primary emergency care system. This suggests that in areas without a primary emergency medical system, there is a marked concentration of patients at secondary and tertiary emergency medical hospitals. These findings may provide insights for establishing emergency medical systems in other areas facing similar challenges.
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