The Medical Hero Era
If the previous generation (→ The Social Medical Drama) portrayed the organization itself, medical dramas from the 2000s onward chose a form that cuts into that weight with one person's skill.
The lead of Doctor X (from 2012) is a freelance surgeon who belongs neither to a university hospital's personnel system nor to its authority. Her line — "I never fail" — is the declaration of someone who holds nothing but her own hands. The 2012 final episode drew 24.4%, and the 2019 final episode 31.0% on a total-viewing basis, each of them first among commercial-network dramas for its year (Video Research, Kanto region).
Code Blue (from 2008) portrayed young doctors riding the doctor-heli; Unnatural (2018) portrayed the work of establishing a cause of death through forensic autopsy. The latter was an original script by Akiko Nogi (→ The Age of the Screenwriter), with Japan's low autopsy rate as the premise of the story. Over these twenty years, the medical drama has moved out of the hospital.