Is dealing with the National Diet a burden on your mind and body? Long hours, high medical costs - Keio University, etc.

As a result of examining the relationship between parliamentary duties and outpatient medical expenses for national civil servants working in 10 ministries in the Kasumigaseki region of Tokyo, a study by Keio University and other institutions found that there was a correlation between the longer deliberations of the relevant parliamentary standing committees and the higher the medical expenses. The need for appropriate health management has been demonstrated once again as the length of work hours required to respond to the Diet has become a problem. The paper was published in an international journal on occupational health by the 26th.

A research team led by Keio University's full-time lecturer Goryu Sato focused on a statistical survey of medical receipts (medical fee statements) when national civil servants visited medical institutions. We investigated the relationship between the annual deliberation time of the standing committees of both the House of Representatives and the House of Representatives related to the policy fields of each ministry, using it as an indicator of ``busyness''.

The target is a total of approximately 250,000 people between the ages of 18 and 50 who work in 10 of the 12 ministries, excluding the Environment and Defense ministries, over an eight-year period from 2016 to 2023. A total of 6,454 outpatient medical claims examined in April of each year were analyzed through a statistical survey.

As a result, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare had the highest monthly outpatient medical expenses per person at 5,125 yen. The Ministry of Justice followed with 5,056 yen, followed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries with 4,637 yen. At the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, medical expenses related to mental health were particularly noticeable. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had the lowest rate at 2,374 yen.

The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare had the longest cumulative deliberation time over eight years (2,534 hours), more than 1,000 hours longer than the Cabinet Office, which came in second place. Ministries with 1% more deliberation time per employee in the previous year tended to have medical expenses 0.25% higher in April of the following year. The Ministry of Finance's medical expenses were low, but in addition to the fact that the budget committee was not included in the analysis, ``it could be that it is difficult for them to get medical attention because of their intense workload,'' Sato said.

Sato pointed out, ``This time, we used deliberation time as an indicator of how busy each ministry is, but we need to properly understand the working hours and workload of national civil servants.''