The Japanese healthcare industry is focused on the domestic market and has let the world of medical tourism pass by. Few hospitals in Japan are foreigner-friendly with only a handful of doctors and hardly any other staff who speak foreign languages. Traditional practices such as making patients wait around for hours and then giving them a very short consultation, are not patient friendly. But the majority of hospitals in Japan are struggling financially, so an interest in medical tourism is emerging. To get anywhere, hospitals would have to become more international and accommodative toward foreign patients' needs. with multilingual staff and international patient centres.

Medical tourism is very much in its infancy in Japan and there are no official statistics on how many foreigners go there for treatment. There are signs the government is getting serious about attracting medical tourists so that hospitals become more internationally competitive. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has new guidelines for hospitals on how to attract medical tourists, emphasizing cost-effective health care and advanced medical technology.

METI will soon launch a pilot program under which two consortiums, made up of hospitals, tour operators, translators and other businesses, start accepting patients from abroad. 20 overseas travelers will be brought to Japan by early March for health checkups or medical treatment at hospitals. Patients are expected from Russia, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.

The Japan Tourism Agency will soon be interviewing hospital officials in Japan and their foreign patients, as well as researching the practices in other parts of Asia, as it wants to develop medical tourism as a way of helping the country achieve a total tourism target of 20 million visitors a year.

Tokyo-based trading company PJL started bringing Russians, especially those living on Sakhalin Island, to Japanese hospitals four years ago. 60 people have visited Japanese hospitals through PJL introductions since November 2005. They have come for treatments ranging from heart bypass surgery to removal of brain tumors to gynecological screenings. PJL receives fees from patients for translating documents and interpreting on site for them.

Hospitals who have been involved in medical tourism say that the key to success in building up the medical tourism industry is finding enough skilled interpreters and translators who can communicate patients' needs to hospitals before they arrive.
Japanese hospitals are restricted in what they can charge at home by Japan's universal health care system. But hospitals are free to set whatever fees they like for medical tourists. Japan's health care is relatively cheap, but reports of patients from abroad being charged more than double what Japanese patients are charged, is not the way to build a medical tourism industry. Hospitals dealing with Russian patients are charging about the same as Japanese patients.

Another problem for Japanese hospitals is the lack of any international accreditation.
Kameda Medical Center, a 965-bed hospital group in Kamogawa, recently became the first hospital in Japan to get approval from the Joint Commission International.Kameda now gets three to six patients per month from China, mainly for preventive and comprehensive health checkups) and post surgery chemotherapy that uses drugs patients cannot get in China. The hospital has signed an agreement with a major Chinese insurer that covers 3,000 affluent Chinese and expatriates.

For medical tourism to grow in Japan, the government needs to do more than just say encouraging words. Rivals such as Malaysia and South Korea, have invested in incentives and marketing support, and are stepping up their levels of assistance.