Editorial by Beat Walti, President of Ospita
After two years dominated by the pandemic, is it really back to normal in hospitals, surgery centres and doctors’ surgeries? No. The healthcare system in Switzerland and its capacity problems continue to dominate the headlines. Overloaded emergencies with un-Swiss-like long waiting times, unoccupied beds due to staff shortages and high funding shortfalls at public hospitals provide material for news and background stories across the country. It seems as if the internationally acclaimed Swiss healthcare system has suffered a few scratches to its paintwork.
What are the responsible authorities doing? The healthcare reforms launched by the Federal Council at a rapid pace over the past ten years are aimed at curbing the rise in premiums for compulsory health insurance. Those responsible – and with them a large part of parliament – have chosen volume control and tariff reductions as the means of choice. Based on a systematically constructed narrative, it is claimed that there is an oversupply in the Swiss healthcare system, which also leads to an inexplicably high demand due to the information gap between doctor and patient. In other words, too many healthcare services are being provided out of greed, more than is medically necessary.
We believe that it is not up to the planning bureaucrats in the federal and cantonal health administrations to judge whether medical treatment is indicated or not. This is the responsibility of the patient-doctor relationship and is subject to the scrutiny of the health insurer. On the other hand, the excesses of official volume planning and control have led to a growing proportion of healthcare resources having to be used for administrative and non-medical activities instead of serving patients.
What this has led to becomes clear when we look at current developments: To an undersupply in several specialities of primary care, to staff shortages and an unattractive job profile at all levels and in some hospital professions, to waiting times and to emergency funding from the public purse (of course only for those hospitals owned by the public purse).
Ospita has always warned – often as the only association – against too much planning and political fine-tuning. It is no pleasure to be proven right now. It is much more important to dispose of the obviously false narrative of recent years and, with more room for manoeuvre for quality competition, to ensure that healthcare professions become more attractive again, that economically operating healthcare companies prevail and that the costs of an ageing population with ever better medical care can be covered by the fees. This is what we are working on.
Read the activity yearbook 2023