How can Canada reduce healthcare wait times by learning from Japan's healthcare system for Japan

How can Canada reduce healthcare wait times by learning from Japan's healthcare system for Japan to speak to learn more about their universal healthcare system and how they have virtually no healthcare wait times come on. Let's go find out. Japan is an Asian country with 123 million people that's about three times Canada's population like Canada. It's part of the G7. It's also the same country that brought us Nintendo Toyota and of course hello Kitty the ladder isn't so high tech but Japan is a country that is known for leading edge quality products. We wanted to learn more about their universal healthcare system. Especially how they don't really have waiting list yes you heard that right the country that voted instant noodles the best invention of the 20th century also has instant healthcare you get it pretty much when you need it 2020 OCD report looked at healthcare wait times in 24 countries they looked at eight categories of waiting times everything from diagnostic scans the cardiac treatment and found Canada tied for last place we had problems with wait times in all eight categories while Japan was ranked in first place with no major problems in any of the eight categories our first off was the cons I region of Japan, which includes some pretty large cities like Osaka and Kyoto thankfully, we could get around this region not too bad as they speak a bit of Japanese. I picked it up when I taught English year 20 years ago back when I had more hair, we thought we would begin by talking with Shirley Zhang to ask about what the system is like for patients. Surely previously lived in Canada for a number of years and now calls Japan home so she's used both systems. What if he noticed what would be the advantages of the universal healthcare system here in Japan compared to what we have in Canada what time is not very long no time you can get your doctors appointment anytime on the same day sometimes yes I know in Canada very difficult for example a few months ago I was really sick so I decided it's time for me to go see a doctor so I just called the clinic and they're like oh yeah we have an opening in the afternoon at this time. Do you wanna come say OK of course but I think it's a. Ask my friends if that's possible in Canada they're like oh it's gonna take a month we wanted to know more about how Japan's universal system differ from Canada so we sat down with professor Matt at lead to make a university in Kyoto Japanese house system is universal, everyone and the system consist of two systems so why it so has insurance or compulsory has insurance and other one is tax based of financing sorcerer assistance the funding is very complex but patience over all pay around 15% of the total spending of his scale from the pockets and the demand is go go through has insurance and tax money so it's a combination of funding from the government as well as insurance so basically if you visit a family doctor in Japan for something like a bad cough, the government pays most of the bill, but you might have to pay a user fee professor mats at a guest it would be around ¥3000 for about $28 Canadian however, if you require something much more serious like a hard operation, the government pays almost the entire bill their caps to make sure patients don't spend too much in a single month on healthcare the Japan times published an article that explains the numbers if you make about 36,000 to 74,000 Canadian the most you'd spend on the surgery is around $840 The poor would pay even less so no one is getting bankrupted if you need a major surgery in Canada, you might not notice it right away but every time you get a paycheck, the government takes a big cut and lots of that goes towards healthcare. In fact we pay more for healthcare in Canada, but they get better service. You have government hospitals and clinics you have private and you have nonprofit. Do they all work together well, I understand if they work well it's a generally so if they need some before some patient to other institutions with other specialities, they collaborate well generally we also saw this in France and Sweden. They do have private nonprofit and government run hospitals in clinics. Doesn't matter which one a patient chooses the tax dollars follow the patient Japan's healthcare system is actually less ideological than what we find in Canada in Canada whenever anyone talks about having more services provided through non-government health providers a lot of special interest groups get upset we need to keep our healthcare system public. They want the government to have as much of a monopoly as possible, even though we've seen that Canada's monopolistic app approach clearly doesn't work. The secret to Japan success seems to be their large supply of healthcare. They have so much healthcare available that they're trying to grow their medical tourism sector. They want patients from China, South Korea, and other countries like Canada to come here for treatment we met with Koji Ogawa with the Osaka convention and tourism bureau to learn more Canadians often wait long wait times for surgery so sometimes somebody has to wait a year for their hip-hop operation or knee operations. Very very painful for people. Do you know, roughly any details about weight times in Japan neon Sun? Is she done there? Magic match chito shoes weeks in Canada years are Japanese entrepreneurs able to start up in the healthcare sector decades but you don't want me doing surgery i'm not a surgeon so I'm really looking forward to this next conversation we're having with Dr. Tokuda. He's with global health and policy Institute. He's also a family doctor so he's got a lot of understanding about the healthcare system that he's actually down in Okinawa Japan, which is kinda like their Hawaii it's it's farther away from the country. We couldn't go down there and visit him. I would've loved to have gone. I've got beautiful beaches but we're gonna do a zoom chat with him and I really looking forward to it. Well thank you Dr. Tokoda for taking a few minutes to talk to us today I'm excited to. To chat with you about Japan's healthcare system it's been very interesting for us to learn more about it. One of the things that I find very surprising. Is that wait times are not. They don't seem to be a major problem here like in Canada. It seems like you don't really have long waiting list. Free pre-access and rapid taxes, major advantage of healthcare we have a private hospitals and clinics and public hospitals, hospitals, and the people in Japan basically they can you know a doctors in any hospitals or clinics that you can. You can see doctors today then next day you can you can see the doctor it's it's your choice. There is notification you can you can visit any. In the hospital after I think a big part of the solution that we could take from Japan would be just sort of your grassroots approach where you allow anyone to come in and provide healthcare as long as they're you know a qualified doctor and meet standards and so forth whereas in Canada at the office, do you have a top down approach that? Maybe one of the lessons that you think we could learn I think that that that major difference between these countries is that the number of bats we have so many pets and the workers the big hospital they work so hard you know they see patient they admit waiting time is reduced because of them available be working hard-working people japan's healthcare system is being like a well run fish market. There's lots of buyers lots of sellers and no one has to wait around for six months just to talk to someone about buying a fish and then another six months to just actually get the fish that's because the government isn't micromanaging things here. The government doesn't decide how many fish to sell and then say too bad if some people don't get fed patients in Japan have a lot of choice because the government encourages people to open up new hospitals, new clinics, another health facilities, and when they do, the government subsidizes most of the bill, whether patient decides to go to a government facility or non-government facility. Like this fish market there's no shortage of options. This is why Japanese patients don't have to wait for healthcare why Japanese people don't have to wait for fish before leaving Osaka. I was very excited to visit Esaka hospital, which is a private hospital that serves the public and patients from outside the country I meeting with hospital director Como Mi Matsu. I know this is still a new hospital here, but have you had any Canadians come here yet? What? Hello hello open canada 51 Mobile 81 so 5 to 7 if somebody came in today and said they need to a knee operation here. Do you know typically how long that takes cause she's that day today about to eat for you if we can make our schedule operation for one month but depending on the ability or do you have any way times that are measured in years? Particular this is a style easy to access how about in Canada? The government doesn't allow private so if this is this might surprise you if you live in Toronto, our biggest city national wide and you need a hip operation you have two choices. One is the wait for the government to provide it. Who knows how long maybe maybe months or year option number two is you pay outside of the province you cannot pay in Toronto to get here the government doesn't allow so they restrict supply somebody we will have a strange situation where someone in one province can pay in another province, and that person in that other province can pay in this province, but you cannot pay in your own province. It should be changed. Think so but we have a lot of government restrictions on supply so when you restrict supply, you have long wait times and no other country does this so maybe North Korea? I don't know so this is this is part of the problem we have. We have a lot of good people in here. It was fascinating to keep hearing that it doesn't matter if you need something like a heart operation or knee operation you can get treatment right away in Japan. We were excited to learn more during some upcoming meetings we had planned in Tokyo, but before we left Osaka. We had to check out a couple of attractions and some Japanese cuisine so something that I really miss about living in Japan is all the great food that they have here. There's a lot of really cool things that go beyond sushi and udon things that are popular in Canada. Yakitori was what I always loved. I'll put on the Aki taco Yaki logical dishes. You might wanna look them up back to work in Tokyo we were off to meet with Dr. Akita at international University of health and welfare Hospital. How long are the wait times here if somebody needs something like a knee surgery or maybe hip surgery it's a little bit of culture shock coming to Japan and hearing about the short surgeries in Canada often and people have to wait a year to see a surgeon and get surgery and they have a lot of pain. That's why we've come here to learn about Japan's healthcare system. Long time a year yes, waiting for a year is bad but it often gets worse in Canada. The system is actively giving up on some patients and letting them die meanwhile in Japan, there are no waiting list. Emergency rooms aren't packed to the brim and they're the ones developing leading edge surgery with robots that you might've heard about they seem to have a much more innovative system than what we have. We wanted a grassroots perspective on healthcare in Japan so we met with the taxpayers organization Japanese for tax before if somebody needs something like a hip her knee operation. Do you know how long but it usually take for them to get in to be able to get that surgery? Get poster maybe one or two week see if anything there you know a few weeks we're looking at months or years yeah, a lot of patients feel that way in Canada are Japanese people generally pleased with the healthcare system here I think so and the doctor and nurse is very kind for us so we actually do research into Canadians dying on waiting list. It's very sad but what's happening we have people. Dying waiting for hip operation knee operation sometimes heart surgery cancer treatment people will go outside the country for life-saving treatments. Do you ever hear those stories in Japan? This actually brings us to a final point and that is that people in Japan tend to be healthier in the first place so they depend on the healthcare system less that's because they tend to eat healthier. They tend to get a lot more exercise so when you're living healthier, you're less likely to develop disease require joint surgery half to visit your family doctor and so forth it's known the Japanese people have one of the highest life expectancy in the world 84 1/2 years versus 81.6 years in Canada. That's an extra three years of life, but what is also important to look at is something known as healthy life expectancy that's the number of years someone lives without disease or disability what Canadians came in at 69.8 years Japanese people came in at 73.4 years in Japan healthy living actually begins at a young age. I can remember when I taught English year 20 years ago at one of the schools I taught that there was one occasion where some boys they broke a Window. And they didn't really get in trouble for it I thought while this is kind of surprising you know it's kind of a serious thing if you break a window, but on another occasion at the same school, there were two girls that were getting in trouble and the teacher was giving them a real stern talking to and wow, I wonder what's going on there so I asked the teacher and she explained that one of the girls had gone to another city and brought back some treats. I think some chocolates or something and she gave them to her friend at school and this was a huge no-no. You were not allowed to bring in junk food to schools. There's no vending machines in school selling chips and chocolate bars you can't drink soda. They just don't allow it in schools, cause it's going to be unhealthy. And that's actually just a huge difference. They also often have nutritionist in schools to help teach kids at a young age about healthy diets and so forth. I am curious about the prevention side of health giving Japanese people are very very healthy. It's quite different from in North America where we have sign. Significant challenges with people in their health because of lifestyle decisions, diet may be lack of exercise those types of things are there any government policies that you think are helpful that encourage healthy living in Japan or is it mostly sort of a cultural thing? Yeah I think they have both government guidelines or Hennessy lifestyle of preparation lot of Valle recommendations yeah stop smoking, moderate drinking, and exercise more something like that and also Japanese culture we eat more fish and usually, in our area people usually walk you know between stations, subway stations, JR stations and a bicycles an incredible week here in Japan just awesome to be back in the country learn a lot more about the healthcare system, squeezing some sightseeing and I gotta say it's been a bit of Cultureshock just learning about the healthcare system and how they don't really have waiting list here in this country we just kept hearing that again and again again very different from Canada. Obviously what we're facing without mine. I think there's too big takeaways for Canada when it comes to fixing our healthcare system. The first would be sort of Japan's approach to increasing the supply of healthcare welcoming people to open up a clinic or maybe a hospital or whatever very different from Canada approach for the government tries control things the second big difference, of course would be other prevention site. People living, healthier lives and you know the government has some policies where they try to nudge people towards healthier living so with that in mind we're finished. Hope you enjoy this and yeah, I hope you subscribe our social media pages and if you wanna learn more about health form you can visit healthperform now.ca. Sign up