DPC, which is an acronym for "Diagnosis Procedure Combination," is a patient classification method developed in Japan for inpatients in the acute phase of illness. It was developed as a measuring tool intended to make acute inpatient care transparent, aiming at standardization of Japanese medical care, as well as evaluation and improvement of its quality. Subsequently, this classification method came to be used in the Japanese medical service reimbursement system for acute inpatient care and appropriate allocation of medical resources. Furthermore, it has recently contributed to the development and maintenance of an appropriate medical care provision system at a regional level, which is accomplished based on DPC data used for patient classification. In this paper, we first provide an overview of DPC. Next, we will look back at over 15 years of DPC history; in particular, we will explore how DPC has been refined to become an appropriate medical service reimbursement system. Finally, we will introduce an outline of DPC-related research, starting with research using DPC data.

Specific ISS and injured organs may be used to estimate resource use or mortality for monitoring quality of trauma care. To integrate a more efficient system of trauma care, variations in resource input among hospitals should be investigated.

Though risk adjustment is necessary in order to make equitable comparisons of resource utilization in the treatment of acute myocardial infarction patients, there is little in the literature that can be practically applied without access to clinical records or specialized registries. The aim of this study is to show that effective models of resource utilization can be developed based on administrative data, and to demonstrate a practical application of the same models by comparing the risk-adjusted performance of the hospitals in our dataset. The study sample included 1748 AMI cases discharged from 10 large, private teaching hospitals in Japan, between 10 April 2001 and 30 June 2004. Explanatory variables included procedures (CABG and PCI), length of stay, outcome, patient demographics, diagnosis and comorbidity status. Multiple linear regression models constructed for the study were able to account for 66.5, 27.7, and 58.4% of observed variation in total charges, length of stay and charges per day, respectively. The performance of models constructed for this study was comparable to or better than performance reported by other studies that made use of explanatory variables extracted from clinical data. The use of administrative data in risk adjustment makes broad scale application of risk adjustment feasible.

After designing a costing framework, a nationwide database comprised of individual case-level costs with components for acute-care hospitals in Japan was successfully developed. We hope this study contributes to appropriate decision making and helps motivate further research geared towards efficient hospital management and a rational payment system in Japan.

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Hospitals with increased resources had greater spread of patient safety and infection control activities. To promote patient safety programs in hospitals, it is imperative that policy makers require the assignment of dedicated full-time staff to patient safety. Economic support for hospitals will also be required to assure that safety programs are sustainable.

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Over the last decade in Japan, laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) has replaced traditional open cholecystectomy as the standard of elective surgery for cholelithiasis. The laparoscopic approach has a clinical course relatively easier to standardize among the different types of intraabdominal surgery. However, significant practice variation is suspected in Japan, but there has been little demonstration or discussion based on empirical data. Through the analysis of 1589 elective LC cases from four leading teaching hospitals in Japan between 1996 and 2000, this study aims to demonstrate the surgical variations and to investigate their determinants regarding the length of hospital stay and the health care charge. Substantially and significantly large variation existed among the hospitals in terms of the length of hospital stay and the total health care charge, even after the differences in patient factors were adjusted. Particularly, the combined drug and exam charge per day was strikingly different among the four hospitals, which indicated that the daily process also varied widely, as did the total course of inpatient care. In addition, intra-hospital variation was also remained very large even after adjusting for all the potential correlates studied. This study alarmingly points out great room for improvement in the efficiency of health care resource use and potentially in the quality of care through standardization of LC. It has serious implications for the national policy and individual providers under the on-going health care reforms directed toward higher efficiency and quality.