A new case-mix based payment system for the psychiatric day care sector in Switzerland: proposed methods for developing the tariff structure.

In many European countries, there has been a shift towards outpatient psychiatric care over the past decades, as it is more cost-effective and resources for health care are limited. Switzerland, however, still has a high number of inpatient psychiatric hospital beds and a comparatively high length of stay. The existence of differing remuneration systems between inpatient and outpatient settings creates a distortion of incentives regarding the choice of treatment setting and an inefficient allocation of resources.