[A report from Committee on Essential Laboratory Tests for initial Diagnosis of Patients]

Recently, medical circumstance is changing and fixed-fee reimbursement systems such as DRG/PPS are now going to be established in our country. Last year, the Japan Society of Clinical Pathology(JSCP) newly set up the Committee on Essential Laboratory Tests for Initial Diagnosis of Patients to keep up with current trends of medical care environment. In this Committee, we have discussed how to ensure the minimum requirement of laboratory tests in patients when they have or may have one of the disease of DRG. And finally the Committee released the proposed guideline for usefulness of the essential laboratory tests in 9 disorders that were randomly picked from DRG. The guidelines were then delivered to members of JSCP, or other medical associations, and doctors working at hospitals in which DRG/PPS system were on going as a trial. We have had many opinions or criticisms from doctors who received the guideline. Now the Committee is planning to publish next version of guideline in which we will have more 14 disorders from DRG and have modifications of original version.