The health ministry intends to strengthen the capacity of public health centers to respond to a pandemic, as a result of operational strain during times of mass infection from the novel coronaviruses.
The lessons learned from the pandemic are expected to be taken into account by each health center over the next year, according to the health crisis response plan.
The plans to be implemented in fiscal 2024 are designed to prepare for possible new infectious disease outbreaks by establishing a staffing structure and priorities for normal operations.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry plans to incorporate its policy on formulating the plans into its basic guidelines for the operation of health centers and other matters alongside the enforcement of the revised Community Health Law in April.
Plans will establish how to assign staff and prioritize tasks based on predictions of work content and volume for situations such as the beginning of an outbreak or a growing case load for an infectious disease.
The ministry plans to create a system in which health centers can easily add staff from outside, and use the IHEAT prefectural-personnel bank, which includes former employees of health centers.
In the event of an outbreak, health centers will be able to outsource some operations to local medical associations. Health monitoring will be taken over by the associations for patients recuperating at home and other services that the health centers are responsible for.
It is hoped that outsourcing will allow the health centers to focus on specialized tasks such as identifying those who have been in close contact with infected people and carrying out infection control measures at elderly care facilities.
As part of the effort to control the spread of the coronaviruses, public health centers had been asking people who had tested positive by phone about their behavioral history, identifying people who had close contact with patients, investigating routes of infection, and determining whether hospitalization was necessary.
As workloads increased along with the infection count, the health centers delayed initial contact with those recovering at home, causing their symptoms to worsen.
The ministry concluded that every health center needed to build a system to prepare for the spread of infection, as lack of preparation had caused confusion.