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Imagine this situation: A patient with chronic heart problems calls his doctor’s office on Tuesday morning for a routine appointment and chooses from a list of four openings that same week. He arrives at the office, where his appointment starts on time. He gets a whopping ninety minutes with the doctor, discusses his ten test results with the doctor, has his chest listened to, and watches as the doctor draws a diagram on a board ...

I promised that this post would be about shared medical appointments, but having just returned from Tokyo, I’m going to defer that discussion until next time so that I can share some of the achievements and challenges of Japanese health care, which you may find as interesting as I do.

I spoke at the 7th Teikyo University/Harvard Symposium along with colleagues from the United States, Japan, Great Britain, and Korea. The symposium’s theme was “The ...