Various efforts have been made in recent years to deal with the uneven distribution of medical doctors in Japan, but very few studies have paid attention to the influence of local education level. In this study, we investigated the relationship between regional education levels and the uneven distribution of doctors. We conducted a multiple linear regression analysis, setting the number of doctors per 100 thousand population per Health Care Region (HCR) as the outcome variable, and the number of high schools whose deviation value is 60 or more, the number of clinics per 100 thousand population, the number of beds per 100 thousand people, the population aging rate, the rate of treatment (outpatient), the density of population and the existence of medical schools as the explanatory variables. As a result, we found that a HCR with a high school with a deviation value of 60 or more had a significantly higher number of physicians per 100 thousand population (P<0.05), and that two or more such high schools intensified the tendency. Similar results were obtained when using only national and public high schools, and when using the rate, rather than the number, of high schools whose deviation value is 60 or more. It is suggested that, especially in rural areas where the lack of the medical doctors is a critical issue, raising the local education level can be an effective measure to relieve the uneven distribution of doctors.
Keywords: Health Care Region; education level; uneven distribution of doctors.