Japanese Hospital Guide -- Chiba's Kameda Hospital (3)

Private vs Public Hospitals

This brings us to the subject of private versus public hospitals: Judging from the above opinions, you would assume that university hospitals, most of which are large and public, could provide better care. However, Wocher disagrees with this assessment: "Most of Japan's hospitals still remain fairly domestic. There is no competition with the National Health Insurance - and most of the large hospitals are public. There is more of a status quo here since it is so heavily regulated by the government." Private hospitals, on the other hand, are under less governmental bureaucracy. So they tend to be more committed to patient care than research and experimentation: "At Kameda, we have to...be more competitive because we do not rely on public funding. In this sense, I think private hospitals really have an incentive to try to improve."

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