Health Minister Yuya Niwa asked an advisory panel Wednesday to look into changing a system in which hospital fees are reduced according to the length of a patient's stay, a practice causing doctors to discharge people too early, ministry officials said.
Under the current system, a patient's hospital charges are reduced in four stages -- after two weeks, one month, three months and six months.
However, an increasing number of hospitals are discharging patients at the three-month stage, saying further hospitalization is unprofitable.