Before Christmas 2021, healthcare stakeholders curafutura, with SWICA and FMH (Swiss Medical Association) submitted a substantially revised and final version (1.3) of TARDOC for approval. It is now again up to the Federal Council (Bundesrat) to decide, if the final version will be accepted and TARDOC may be implemented in Switzerland in the foreseeable future.
This is not the first time that healthcare stakeholders have attempted to revise Switzerland’s current outpatient tariff list TARMED, to a new version, the TARDOC. Experts agree that the current TARMED is outdated and requires revision to keep its 12 billion CHF spending under control.
There were 2 previous attempts at revising the TARMED to the TARDOC, which were rejected by healthcare authorities due to various reasons. In the last revision, for example, H+ (hospitals of Switzerland) and santésuisse did not contribute to the revision, which was a sticking point.
For the current proposed version TARDOC 1.3, H+ (hospitals of Switzerland) and santésuisse (an industry organisation for insurers) who previously were not involved, were now able to actively contribute to revisions as required by the Federal Council.
In a statement both curafutura and FMH stress that currently no other alternative to TARDOC exists. While TARDOC is still based on a single-tariff services, it is acknowledged that once flat rates for certain outpatient services are approved by the Federal Counciil, they may replace corresponding positions in TARDOC in the future.
It is therefore likely that the outpatient physician tariff in Switzerland will consist of individual tariffs for the time being. However, certain tariff items could be compensated via case flat rates per in the future.
For more background on the TARMED to TARDOC revision, see our previous article.