The nursing-care insurance policyholders in Japan may not receive the care they need due to acute shortage of nursing care service providers in the country.
A survey conducted by Nippon Care Service Craft Union in April this year found that many companies in Japan providing home-visit nursing care were at times unable to provide such services due to a serious shortage of caregivers.
More than 1,000 administrators at home-visit nursing care service providers and care managers participated in the online survey. The survey showed that 89.4% of the administrators said there had been times since April last year when they had to decline requests for nursing care services.
It also revealed that 55.2% of them reported a decline in last year's revenues. Of them, 73.3% cited the labour shortage as the prime reason.
More than two thirds of care managers, or 68.3% also cited the shortage of caregivers as a reason why they were sometimes unable to draw up a necessary care plan for those seeking their services.
Union officials have warned that nursing-care insurance policyholders may not receive the care they need due to the problem. The Union has said that the government should take measures to help secure necessary manpower as the labour shortage could undermine the foundation of the nation's nursing-care insurance programme.
In 2024 Japan’s Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry had actively taken up the recruitment of nursing care staff from South-east Asia to cope with this issue. It had also proposed to set up a nursing care education programme in Indonesia.
With Japan ageing rapidly, more elderly people are expected to need long term home care. As such the government deems it necessary to make strategic efforts to bring in human resources from elsewhere.