Competition and Cooperation: Building a Sustainable Healthcare Delivery System in a Society with a Declining Population

Abstract

AbstractIn response to social changes such as the declining birth rate, ageing population and rapid workforce decline, the Japanese government has implemented regulatory reforms in the healthcare delivery system, including the introduction of collaboration promotion policies. The urgent demand for medical care that arose in 2020 to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic further demonstrates the necessity of a sustainable healthcare delivery system. This requires a major legal shift from competition to cooperation, which necessitates revisiting competition policy in the healthcare sector. It is vital to clarify the challenges facing the healthcare system and to consider how competition policy relates to the establishment of a sustainable healthcare delivery system. This chapter first analyses the legal framework of, and recent reforms to, the healthcare delivery system in Japan from the perspective of competition policy. It then reviews the challenges the system faces. The chapter concludes by discussing the issues to be considered further when creating a sustainable healthcare delivery system and enacting competition policies.KeywordsHealthcare delivery systemDeclining populationCompetition policySustainabilityRegional infrastructure