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Hospital beds per 1,000 population, 2021: 12.6
Average length of stay in hospital, 2021: 16.0
Average number of in-person doctor consultations per person, 2021: 11.1
CT scanners per million population, 2021: 116
MRI units per million population, 2021: 57
PET scanners per million population, 2021: 5

Source: OECD (2023), Health at a Glance 2023: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, doi.org/10.1787/7a7afb35-en.

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“The Medical Care Act, 1948 defines hospitals and clinics as places where physicians or dentists conduct a medical or dental practice, serving either the general public or a particular group of people (Government of Japan, 1948b). Hospitals are defined to have facilities that can accommodate at least 20 patients, and clinics have fewer than 20 hospital beds, although many have none at all.

“In 2016, there was a total of 178 911 active medical facilities, including 8442 hospitals, 101,529 general clinics and 68,940 dental clinics. Hospitals are further divided into 7380 general hospitals and 1062 psychiatric hospitals (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2017r). Of the general clinics, 7629 (7.5%) had beds, and 93,900 (92.5%) did not. Among 7629 general clinics with beds, two thirds (70.7%, 5395) had 10–19 beds. Among 8442 hospitals, there were 3039 facilities with 20–99 beds (36.0%), 2754 with 100–199 (32.7%), 2231 (26.5%) with 200–499, and 418 with 500 beds or more (5.0%).”

Source: Sakamoto H, Rahman M, Nomura S, Okamoto E, Koike S, Yasunaga H et al. Japan Health System Review. Vol. 8 No. 1. New Delhi: World Health Organization, Regional Office for South-East Asia, 2018.

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World Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems and policies in the US and sixteen other nations.

Page last updated November 28, 2023 by Doug McVay, Editor.