What do Swiss doctors earn? It’s hard to know.

In Switzerland, salary information for physicians working outside of hospital settings is not publicly available. Some argue transparency is necessary to keep health care costs in check. 

The latest available data from 2009 shows that average salaries for certain outpatient professions amounted to CHF107,000 ($108,000) per year for child psychiatrists, CHF198,000 per year for general practitioners, CHF261,000 per year for orthopaedists, CHF340,000 per year for radiologists and CHF345,000 per year for eye doctors. 

No data on salaries for outpatient practice has since been officially reported or published because the Swiss Medical Association is no longer allowed to do so. The Federal Social Insurance Office stopped allowing the publication of those salaries because it deemed the association’s way of gathering the information to be imprecise. 

Now, the federal government is stepping in, promising to carry out a study and publish more doctor income data by the end of the year as Stephan Spycher of the Federal Health Office told Swiss Public Television SRF.

Swiss hospitals do generally report salary data for their doctors. A recent publication on first-year salaries in canton Zurich reported that a chief resident makes CHF12,824 per month in his or her first year (or about CHF168,000 per year under the Swiss 13-month salary system). 

An intern at a hospital earns CHF7,436 per month in the first year on the job, while a resident takes home CHF11,152.