Research trends in healthcare and hospital administration in Japan: Content analyses of article titles in the Journal of the Japan Society for Healthcare Administration

Abstract Background To understand the characteristics and changes in research trends within various academic fields, research increasingly uses text mining, content analysis, or bibliometric methods. Such methods are widely used in medicine and medical policy to analyze trend changes over extended periods. Methods Using text-mining, this study quantitatively analyzed research trends in studies of healthcare administration in Japan, focusing on article titles over 28 years taken from the Journal of Japan Society for Healthcare Administration, known as Byon Kanri (Hospital Administration) from 1964 to 2007. Co-occurrence network and correspondence analysis were conducted to understand the changes in research interests during this period. To readily comprehend changing research trends over time in healthcare administration studies in Japan, a 10-year period division was set, resulting in three time periods. The correspondence analysis method analyzed the features and trends in research during each period. Results The configuration figures derived from the correspondence analysis revealed the first dimension revealed as an axis showing time transition and the second dimension as an axis showing policy/specific situations. The extracted words displayed in the configuration maps at the intersection of the two axes were the patient, survey, and evaluation. They had no distinctive features compared to the other words and were commonly used in the titles of articles in this journal, regardless of the period. Conclusions The text data analysis throughout the period shows the characteristics of and changes in the research trends in healthcare and hospital administration in Japan. Many points were clarified by this paper. First, the changes in the geriatric care system of public medical insurance and the related introduction of the long-term care insurance system in 2000 are also expressed in the characteristic extracted words expressed in the co-occurrence network analysis and correspondence analysis. Second, references to the role of doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals during the 14 years after the journal name change were frequent in studies, presenting extracted words such as doctors, staff, nurses, nursing, managers, roles, and relationships. The chi-square test focusing on these extracted words and the period classification confirmed a statistically significant relationship between them.