Parliament revisits doctors’ 12-hour billing cap

Switzerland’s Council of States Health Commission will reconsider a planned cap limiting how many hours doctors can bill to basic health insurance, SRF reported. The cap is due to take effect in January and would allow doctors to bill an average of 12 hours per day.

The tariff partners have agreed on the limit, and the proposal is now before the Federal Council. But about 42,000 people have signed a petition opposing it.

Hannes Germann, a Schaffhausen politician from the Swiss People’s Party and president of the Council of States Health Commission, told SRF that the issue would be reviewed at the commission’s next meeting. Federal Councillor Elisabeth Baume-Schneider, the responsible minister, is also expected to attend.

Germann wants to pressure the Federal Council to postpone the cap by at least several years. He fears doctors could close their practices or treat fewer patients once it takes effect.

The debate centres on Tardoc, Switzerland’s doctors’ tariff system. It assigns both a price and a set time to treatments. For example, doctors can bill 30 minutes for a particular ultrasound examination even if improved technology allows them to complete it in half that time.

Baptiste Hurni, a Neuchatel politician from the Social Democratic Party and a member of the Council of States, said some specialists could reach the 12-hour limit by midday under the system, particularly when treating patients with technology-intensive procedures. “That means we as patients pay these doctors for 12 hours when they have effectively worked for five or six,” he said. Hurni argued that the problem was excessive tariffs, not the cap, and said he would support introducing it in January to put pressure on the system to record more realistic treatment times.

Saskia Schenker, director of the health insurers’ association, also called for more precise and up-to-date data. She said the debate could help the tariff organisation obtain better information from medical professional associations and allow the partners, together with the Swiss Medical Association and H plus, to improve the tariff structure and adapt it to actual conditions.