Masahiro Hirose is professor of Patient Safety at Shimane University, and director for Shimane University Hospital’s Center for Hospital Medicine. He also serves as director for the Department of Community-Based Health Policy and Quality Management in Shimane University’s Faculty of Medicine.
Previously a surgeon at rural hospitals across Japan for over 17 years, in 2000 he enrolled in a Master’s program at Kyoto University’s School of Public Health while working towards a PhD in its Department of Healthcare Economics and Quality Management. Hirose acted as director of the Patient Safety Division at Kyoto University Hospital from 2002-2005. He was awarded an Abe fellowship in 2005- the same year he completed his second PhD. Hirose spent one year as a visiting scientist at Harvard School of Public Health, where he conducted a comparative study on leading factors associated with adverse medical events in Japan and the US.
He has worked at Shimane University since 2008- first as associate professor at the Center for Hospital Medicine of Shimane University Hospital and later as professor in the Department of Health Policy. Since he became vice president of the university hospital in 2018. Hirose has been researching patient safety, infection control, hospital administration, quality of health care, rural medicine, and integrated community health care system since 2000.
Award Information
This project focuses on the difference of factors associated with medical accidents due to the difference of health care systems between Japan and US. It is easy for us to imagine that factors of medical accidents that occurred in each country must be related with each country' s health care system. In Japan many crude medical accidents which include the accidents that a patient was dead because of undergoing endoscopic surgery by surgeons with no experience, and that a surgeon falsified a medical record in order not to be punished, on the basis that Japanese health professional training system runs short of the viewpoint of specialty and ethics. Compared between the data of many incident/accident reports collected at NCPS, PSRS in the US and a university hospital in Japan, the difference of medical accidents' characteristics will be able to be cleared. The conclusion will contribute to health policies of both countries.
