The actual activity of the Fukuoka Medical Network for the Seriously Intractable Neurological Diseases

The Fukuoka Prefectural Medical Health Care Network for Seriously Intractable Neurological Diseases was initiated in 1998 to improve the care of patients for seriously intractable neurological diseases. The network, now, consists of 15 basic cooperative hospitals, and 105 general cooperative hospitals. Two medical care coordinators manage the transfer of network patients based on information of the patient's condition and the capacity of cooperative hospitals using information about the number of available beds in cooperative hospitals. A total number of patients with seriously intractable neurological diseases who were referred to the network for the last eight years was 277, 163 of whom were amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients and of which 75 of them were under mechanical ventilation. Of these 277 patients, 253 were successfully transferred to chronic care hospitals or referred to regional visiting physicians through the network. Cooperative and non-cooperative hospitals accepted 157 and 49 patients, respectively, while 38 were referred to visiting physicians. A number of medical care consultations has increased year by year, and reached 17,652 in the eighth year. The main issues for these consultations were to make hospital arrangements for a patient. Comprehensive long-term care is necessary for Japanese ALS patients because one-third is under mechanical ventilation. Despite this, it is still difficult to secure available beds for such patients who require long-term care. In the future, it will be necessary to improve the support for an environment for home care and to make the system in which cooperative hospitals support patients during the home care.