About half of hospitals that accept My Number identification cards as health insurance certificates in Japan say they see no benefit for patients, a recent survey by the labour ministry has found, despite the government’s push for people to register for the integrated cards.
The number of people who have already accepted the cards as their health insurance certificates has surpassed 70 million, but actual use of the cards by patients remains low at around 4 percent, according to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.
The government plans to phase out the current health insurance certificates in autumn 2024, replacing them and integrating their functions with the My Number cards, which carry a 12-digit number for each individual that links various personal data, such as tax and social security information.
The integrated cards will allow medical institutions to view the cardholder’s data, including records of medication prescriptions and health checks, and offer patients appropriate treatment options, the government says.
But the My Number ID system has become unpopular with the public following revelations of personal data leaks and registration errors, with some calling for the phase-out of the health insurance cards to be delayed or reversed.
In the survey, conducted between July and September this year, only 29.6 per cent of the 892 hospitals that have installed the new system for using the cards said they were using it to view patients’ health records with their consent, while 68.2 per cent said they were not using the system.
Of the hospitals using the system, 51 per cent said they did not see any particular benefits or did not know what the benefits were for patients when asked a multiple choice question.
Some 31.8 per cent said that using the system allowed them to make arrangements about redundant prescriptions or problematic mixing of medicines.
More than 42 per cent also said they did not see any particular benefits for the hospitals themselves, or that they did not know of any.
In separate surveys of patients, 36.3 per cent said in their postal responses that they saw no benefit in using the cards, while 46.2 per cent said the same online, according to the Department of Health.
The My Number ID system was launched in 2016, assigning a 12-digit number to every citizen and foreign resident in Japan.
