Low-Efficacy Medical Care: Wasteful Medications, Tests Should Be Reduced

Editorial

16:16 JST, January 11, 2026

If medications with low efficacy are continued aimlessly or unnecessary medical tests are repeatedly conducted, that leads to wasteful medical spending. Doing so could also risk worsening patients’ health due to side effects of the drugs.

Such practices are called “low-value care.” One estimate indicates that more than ¥100 billion has been spent annually in Japan on such medical care alone.

A typical example of low-value care is prescribing antibiotics intended to treat bacterial infections for patients with colds caused by viruses. Another is prescribing painkillers intended to suppress neuropathic pain for back pain caused by problems related to bones or muscles.

A team comprising researchers from the University of Tsukuba examined records of outpatients at clinics nationwide and found that one in 10 patients had received low-value care.

There have been cases in which even widely used medications and testing were later found to have little scientific value as research progressed. If drugs are used incorrectly in the first place, they cannot be beneficial for treatment. Wasteful care should be eliminated as much as possible.

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry intends to advance efforts to reduce low-value care.

The ministry plans to gather information from medical societies on treatments and tests considered to be ineffective. Based on this information, it intends to consider measures such as excluding relevant medications from public health insurance coverage when the government-set medical service fees are revised in two years.

Needless to say, there will likely be cases in which it is difficult to determine that a certain type of medical care is ineffective. The central government should carefully examine this issue in cooperation with experts.

There are reportedly many cases in which clinic doctors who provide low-value care are older or handle a large number of patients. It is also notable that doctors who provide such care often do not have specialist qualifications.

Medical societies need to raise awareness by specifying examples and other matters related to low-value care in clinical practice guidelines that doctors use as treatment references. Conducting training programs for veteran doctors is another possible idea.

Outpatient care basically operates on a fee-for-service system in which medical service fees increase in accordance with the number of medical examinations and prescriptions. This is believed to encourage doctors to prescribe an excessive amount of drugs and conduct more tests than needed. Without reviewing this system, this issue seems unlikely to be fundamentally resolved.

The prescription of antibiotics for viral colds poses significant health risks. The overuse of antibiotics causes bacteria to mutate, increasing the prevalence of drug-resistant strains. If patients are infected with such strains, treating them becomes difficult.

Reviewing low-value care is an urgent task to prevent such a situation.

 (From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Jan. 11, 2026)