UTSUNOMIYA -- Nearly 70% of health care facilities surveyed in this capital city of east Japan's Tochigi Prefecture feel burdened by the recently ceased issuance of conventional health insurance cards, an association of health providers found, as the country switches over to all-in-one "My Number" cards in a digitalization push.

The Tochigi Medical and Dental Practitioners Association sent the surveys by fax to 645 health facilities on Dec. 9, one week after health insurance cards stopped being issued. By Dec. 18, it had received responses from 192 facilities, or 29.8%.

Nearly two thirds -- 66.1% -- of the facilities felt burdened by the change, including 25.5% that felt "very troubled." A mere 2.6% felt less burdened.

The most common form of problem caused by the new My Number cards was the inability to correctly display older forms of Chinese kanji characters, resulting in black circle symbols, encountered by 107 of the surveyed facilities. Next were issues around card reader connection and recognition, complained of by 78 respondents, followed by "invalid credentials" by 56.

A total of 77.6% of those surveyed said that the number of My Number health insurance card users had increased since Dec. 2. A large majority, 77.1%, however, answered that My Number card users immediately before represented under 30% -- even falling under 10% at 31.8% of the facilities.

Double the proportion of facilities felt that there was "no merit" to the My Number cards, 42.2%, versus those which felt there was, at 20.8%. Reasons cited by those who saw merit included "the ability to check prescription history" and "creating charts for new patients became easy."

Health facilities hoping for the conventional insurance cards to be brought back numbered 129, or 67.2% of the total, while just seven, or 3.6%, did not hope so.

The association wishes for the cards to exist alongside the My Number system. It stated, "A significant number of people believe they can no longer use their insurance card. To prevent problems, we will distribute a notice to our member medical institutions that says, 'You can use either the health insurance cards or the My Number insurance cards.'"

According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, as of the end of October the usership rate of My Number insurance cards was 18.59% in Tochigi Prefecture. While about 3 percentage points higher than the national average of 15.67%, acceptance of the cards is yet to make progress.

(Japanese original by Hiroko Arita, Utsunomiya Bureau)