TARDOC: A practical guide to your new medical bills
As of January 1, the TARDOC system has replaced TARMED for the pricing of outpatient medical care. Joy Demeulemeester, Corporate Health Specialist at Loyco, helps you decipher the new TARDOC system and keep control of your medical bills with a few best practices and tips for serenely navigating this pricing change.
On January 1, 2026, TARDOC replaced the TARMED system for pricing outpatient medical care, i.e. excluding inpatient hospitalization. This change in pricing system does not, however, alter the scope of care covered by compulsory insurance. The catalog of services covered by the KVG/LAMal remains unchanged, but it is the way in which these services are billed that has changed. From now on, outpatient care will be billed either on the basis of TARDOC points, or on a lump-sum basis.
As for the price, it too will evolve. Sometimes downwards, as in the case of outpatient surgery, but sometimes upwards, depending on the service and consultation method chosen.
The new pricing system places greater value than before on primary care services (general practitioners, pediatricians), and in particular on the indispensable work of coordinating care. Remote consultations (telephone, SMS, e-mail) are now more clearly defined and detailed, and the new invoices will offer greater transparency on “invisible work” or work done in the absence of patients.
Will family doctor bills rise?
For the time being, it’s difficult to gauge the impact on patients’ and policyholders’ wallets, especially as the new pricing system is open-ended. It will be updated annually by the tariff partners (insurers and providers). And to avoid a cost explosion, the Federal Council has imposed a spending brake, capping cost increases in the outpatient sector at 4% per year.
In any case, TARDOC aims to bring billing closer to medical reality, notably with per-minute billing after an initial 5-minute period. The official catalog of outpatient services (CPTMA), including TARDOC positions and services billed on a flat-rate basis, is publicly available. It can be consulted, for example, on the website of the Ambulatory Medical Tariffs Organization. However, it remains highly technical and difficult to understand for the uninitiated.
Four key points to check your invoices
The easiest thing to do is to concentrate on checking the following four points on your medical invoices, to make sure they’re correct:
- Date and place of performance.
- Type of service (in-office consultation, telephone, technical procedure).
- The time billed (the time actually spent with the doctor).
- Total amount.
A number of best practices also help policyholders and patients to control costs more effectively:
- Prepare yourself before the consultation by writing down the various questions to be asked, and don’t hesitate to take note of the answers given by the doctor.
- Avoid redundant examinations by informing your doctor of tests already carried out elsewhere.
- Discuss the usefulness of certain actions, asking “And if we did nothing, what would happen?”
- Dare to tackle the question of the cost of the different treatment options, the expected benefits and the negative effects?
- Choose a suitable insurance model (such as a family doctor) to optimize your care, for example by using the excellent free comparator offered by RTS and FRC.
A benevolent transition
All patients and insured persons who pay close attention to their medical bills should bear in mind, however, that this billing system is also new for healthcare providers. Your family doctor was only introduced to TARDOC in the autumn of 2025, a period often busy with consultations, and he too must learn to use this complex tool. If your general practitioner’s bill comes as a surprise, ask him or her a friendly question. To err is human, and tell yourself that if money had been his or her driving force, he or she would have chosen a far more lucrative specialization.