About 40 percent of the people who died at emergency medical centers across Japan could have been saved if they had received adequate emergency care, according to a recent study by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
The study was conducted by a ministry group led by Shuji Shimazaki, a Kyorin University professor who sent questionnaires to 165 emergency medical centers across the country and obtained 108 replies.
The findings largely match the results of a similar survey in 2000, underlining the seriousness of the problem in existing emergency medical care. The findings prompted the Japanese Association for the Surgery of Trauma and the Japanese Association for Acute Medicine to start reviewing the existing emergency care system.