NCD Alliance Japan / Health and Global Policy Institute (HGPI) presented a policy proposal entitled, “Proposal on Achieving Better Communication Between Healthcare Providers and Beneficiaries: Building a Flat Healthcare System That Draws Upon Both Sides of Healthcare Equally.”

To promote countermeasures against non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), cancers, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases, and mental and neurological disorders, Health and Global Policy Institute (HGPI) has been operating NCD Alliance Japan as a collaborative platform bringing together multi-stakeholders involved with NCDs from industry, government, academia, and civil society including people living with and affected by NCDs to formulate policy proposals, provide support for people living with or affected by NCDs, and conduct surveys and research.

In the past, people receiving healthcare would follow the treatment plans set out by their doctors without question, even when they were not given sufficient explanations. With the advance of the information society and growing awareness towards the decision-making rights of people receiving healthcare in recent years, we are now transitioning to an era that emphasizes the Shared Decision Making (SDM) model. In this model, people receiving healthcare and medical staff decide the direction of care together after engaging in sufficient communication to provide the people receiving care and others most affected with ample information.

However, decision making in healthcare has characteristics that are not present in decision making in various other fields. Various factors must be taken into account, like the psychological states of the people receiving healthcare and others most affected and information asymmetry between those parties and medical staff. Decisions concerning treatment plans can have profound effects on a person’s life or their daily living everyday thereafter. It can be difficult for people receiving healthcare and medical staff to collaborate and reach consensus, and many people on both sides of healthcare recognize this as a problem.

NCD Alliance Japan believes Japan’s future healthcare policy must establish a flat healthcare system in which healthcare providers and beneficiaries cooperate with each other from positions of equality to maximize their respective strengths. In “Proposal on Achieving Better Communication Between Healthcare Providers and Beneficiaries: Building a Flat Healthcare System That Draws Upon Both Sides of Healthcare Equally,” we identified communication issues between people receiving healthcare and medical professionals in clinical settings and obstacles to cooperation in a comprehensive and cross-cutting manner using a public opinion survey and in-depth interviews. We then presented four perspectives on solving those issues as well as concrete examples of actions to be taken by each stakeholder for that purpose.

Based on “Proposal on Achieving Better Communication Between Healthcare Providers and Beneficiaries: Building a Flat Healthcare System That Draws Upon Both Sides of Healthcare Equally,” we will further deepen our activities for mental health and work towards policy reform by holding repeated opinion exchanges with as many multi-stakeholders as possible moving forward.