[Cancer care in the new era: special emphasis on physician's mind-set anticipated in risk management]

In the more than 20 years, since the informed consent movement was begun, and 36 years later than the US, at last the Japanese government enforced the Cancer Control Act in April of 2007. Japan has at last taken the right direction toward cancer control. Cancer is a systemic disease. The right diagnosis, standard treatment and expectation of risks, and prevention or therapy are crucial. Total management of patients with such a systemic progressing disease is very difficult without a system supervised by medical oncologist(s). Now outpatient chemotherapy is the major place of practice for medical oncology. Establishing an efficient outpatient chemotherapy system is key interest for hospital management and not only risk-management but also education and clinical research. Here the author makes several comments on these issues.