The Health of Countries: What Canada Can Learn from Japanese Hospitals

Abstract:

Japan’s healthcare system has received limited attention from policymakers and researchers who tend to look to the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand for ideas and policy prescriptions. The paper argues that Japan should be added to this list. Reaching beyond the system level and examine hospital management, and the implications of the systems for delivery, can lead to international management learning analogous to that that occurred as Japanese practices such as kaizen and kanban (just-in-time) delivery systems that were adopted internationally in the 1980s and 1990s. The report is based on comparative case studies of six hospitals, three in Japan and three in Ontario, Canada’s largest province, to see how system features are manifest in practice.  It concludes with some tentative findings and implications for hospital management.