Using data obtained from physician, dentist, and pharmacist surveys conducted in Japan from 1996 to 2014, we analyzed disparities in numbers of physicians according to clinical department and region classification and their chronological changes by developing a software program that computes numbers of physicians according to clinical department and region by date in response to changes in department names and municipality mergers.

The results showed that from 1996 to 2002 the total number of physicians increased at an annualized rate of 1.4%, but the total number of surgeons and total number of obstetricians and gynecologists decreased, while the numbers of physicians in cardiovascular surgery departments, plastic surgery departments, rehabilitation departments, and anesthesiology departments increased greatly at annualized rates exceeding 3%, and that as of 2008 large disparities between big cities and sparsely populated areas were seen in the numbers of physicians per unit population in all clinical departments, and from 2008 to 2014 the disparities in all of the clinical departments except emergency departments grew even wider.

Since there were wide disparities between urban regions and rural regions in the total numbers of surgery departments, dermatology departments, ophthalmology departments, and obstetrics and gynecology departments, and they are clinical departments that need to be located nearby, it is particularly necessary to correct the disparities in these clinical departments.

Since 1980s, the average length of stay of inpatients at hospitals has become shorter.　In general, it is considered that the duration of hospitalization is influenced by the fee points for medical service;however, responses to policies vary from hospital to hospital.　We followed, for a long period of time, and evaluated the annual changes in the average length of stay at general hospitals by founder to determine if the length of stay was associated with the policies in some way.

We performed a join-point regression analysis using data from hospital reports between 1971 and 2014.　The results revealed that the changes in the length of stay indeed varied by the founder of the hospital.　In addition, we randomly sampled policies associated with the length of stay from basic historical materials to summarize the tendencies.　The results showed two major tendencies:policies not applicable to long-term care for elderly, or policies including provision of financial incentives to shorten the length of stay to promote shift to acute-phase care.

In regard to the annual changes in the length of stay, medical corporations showed marked differences from other founders.　Since multiple policies corresponding to inflection points of the length of stay were found, we concluded that medical corporations possibly had strong responses to policies.

For the purpose of evaluating the relationship between functions provided by geriatric health services facilities （hereinafter referred to as geriatric facilities） and the development status of fee-based nursing home/senior housing with supportive services （hereinafter referred as senior housing）, we randomly selected one geriatric facility from each of the 343 secondary medical areas in Japan to conduct a mail-in, self-administered questionnaire survey on counseling staff at each facility.　A total of 100 facilities （29%） responded to the survey.　We analyzed the relationship with the capacity of senior housing units to the number of elderly aged 75 or over in each secondary medical area with the geriatric facility that responded to the survey.　There were no correlations with the rate of seniors discharged to their home, the bed turnover rate of the facility, and the rate of seniors who had difficulties in being discharged home among those residing in the facility.　However, among those with such difficulties there was a positive correlation with the rate of seniors unwilling to return home for financial reasons per facility residents （ρ = 0.225, p < 0.05）.　The results demonstrated that there are more residents who are unwilling to return home for financial reasons at geriatric facilities in areas with more senior housing units:furthermore, differences in the amount of self-pay expenses between the geriatric facility and nearby senior housing can be influential in improving the bed turnover rate at geriatric facilities, or the rate of seniors discharged to their home.