A nationwide survey shows more than 200 hospitals closed their emergency rooms in the past two years due to financial difficulties and a shortage of doctors.
A total of 235 hospitals ended emergency care in 2006 and 2007. That's 5.6 percent of those offering immediate care.
The Asahi Shimbun newspaper survey of hospitals, said that doctors were increasingly unwilling to work overnight shifts and hospitals in rural areas were
unprofitable.
There have been numerous cases in the past couple of years in which ambulances failed to find a hospital due to recent cutbacks, and some emergency-care seekers died en route.
What Hippocratic oath?
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