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The Federal Audit Office criticizes that the Federal Office of Public Health could have done more to prevent abusive billing of test costs. The BAG can now claim initial successes.
Time was pressing. At the beginning of the pandemic, test centers had to be set up quickly. The federal government covered the test costs, so that no one had to do without a test for cost reasons. For a long time, this broad testing was central to contact tracing and pandemic monitoring.
Health insurance companies as a financial hub
To ensure that the money flows between the test centers, the laboratories and the federal government, the health insurance companies have taken on the function of a financial hub. In its most recent audit report, the financial control honored this as positive. It was the “most efficient solution” to use existing structures, says the responsible audit manager Daniel Hasler.
Ultimately, only the tested person can verify whether the test actually took place,
On the other hand, an important element in the fight against abuse was missing. The health insurance companies were not obliged to send a statement to all people tested. That is a major deficiency. “Only the tested person can ultimately check whether the test actually took place,” says Hasler.
No transparency about test locations
Another point of criticism of financial control is that there is a lack of transparency about the test locations. The billing numbers, the so-called paying office register number ZSR, are prone to abuse. Normally, a medical service provider receives such a billing number for each canton. For the Covid tests, however, test centers could be operated throughout Switzerland with one number.
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Keystone/Markus Scholz
“That means the trail is lost,” criticizes Hasler. Unfortunately, various service providers exploited this gap and submitted unjustified statements.
First success for the BAG
The Federal Office of Public Health has nevertheless discovered a few traces. So it can book a first success. On request, a media spokesman writes that a case has been cleared up and 6,000 francs have been paid back. That is still a low amount in view of a possible damage sum of 20 million francs. The health insurance association Santésuisse assumes this amount.
The BAG continues to write that there are currently 30 possible cases of abuse, some of which are related. Many cases are highly complex.
In one case, the tests were not billed by the test center, but the bills were resold several times, the BAG explains. This procedure is called factoring. In the meantime, 15 people from the BAG are working partially or completely on the recovery dossiers, and external specialists are also being consulted.
limitation period of 5 years
The financial control demands that the BAG must continue to track down suspected abuses and reclaim the funds. Head of Audit Daniel Hasler speaks of a limitation period of five years. “There’s definitely still time to collect these funds,” says Hasler.
From January 1st, the federal government will no longer cover the costs of the Covid test. Parliament decided that in the winter session. The federal government will have invested around four billion francs in the free Covid tests for the population. With the end of the free trials, there will be no additional cases of abuse.