Takayama Eriko

The purpose of this article is to consider the influence of the health care-related social policy on social work practice in hospitals. First, references to social workers in documents such as the medical service fees and medical service law ware reviewed. Through this, what social workers was expected was considered. Changes in the social workers were analyzed as follows: (1) the trend of the number of social workers in the health care field; (2) changes to the assigned department of social workers in hospitals; and (3) changes in the ratio of discharge supports. It appeared that the number of social workers has increased. Furthermore, the percentage of social workers belonging to regional medical care coordination departments and the percentage of social work tasks involring discharge supports have become high. Finally, I concluded that the ratio of discharge supports shows the scale of the social work duties and that here is a relationship between the health care-related social policy and social work practice.