The administration of medical records in Japanese hospitals: a status report.

We performed the nation-level investigation, the aim of which is to grasp the present status of the administration of medical records in Japanese hospitals. There have been conducted such few investigations as this one yet in Japan. We made a report of the administration of medical records, the use of medical records, and the use of advanced tools like microfilms, computers, broken down by some attributes like establishments and bed sizes. As a result of statistical analysis of 446 hospitals, 10% hospitals showed considerably advanced administration of medical records. The remaining hospitals depend on the manual administration as an initial stage. We would generally say that private hospitals are the most delayed, however the difference is small. With respect to the classification of bed sizes, the degree of advancement in the administration of medical records is parallel to the direction of the more bed sizes.