Hi,
let me give you estimates for what would happen here in NZ. I know that Australia is fairly similar:
There is a huge difference between medical problems and accident related problems. We do not have compulsory health insurance (as I heard you have got in Germany), but compulsory accident insurance and a free of charge public system.
In private practice, we therefore mainly see accident related cases paid for by insurance, e.g. musculoskeletal/ orthopaedic/ sports symptoms. The insurance has guidelines as to the expected amount of total treatment sessions and usually, you are able to stay well within. There are also a few clinics who see private respiratory and private neurological clients. Treatment duration is anything between 20 and 60 minutes and patients come 1 - 4x per week. Goal setting is a major and all clients are expected to do a thorough home exercise programme in order to maintain achieved progress. I presume that is the same all over the world.
E.g. (I made this up) a client comes in with thoracic pain and inability to move after twisting his back; you might see him for an hour initially to get history and mobilise/ manipulate and tell him to come back next day; you would see him then for a check and a home exercise programme (30 min) and again for a review after a week (30 min).
Someone with a mobility problem after an ankle fracture might need to come 3x weekly for 30 min each for a fortnight and might then reduce to once weekly 20min for 3 weeks.
Neurological cases, such as Strokes, are generally cared for in hospitals on acute wards, stroke units and rehab wards and later on at home/ community. Treatment duration in hospital is anything between 20 minutes to 2x 60min per day. It depends on what you have analysed as neccessary and on what the patient is able to tolerate. In the community = at home, people get seen for 30 to 60 minutes, according to who pays (public = 30 min; insurance = 60 min). For private long term neuro clients it depends entirely on the contract you have made with them and the goals they have set to achieve. If you can no longer justify why your intervention is beneficial or can no longer show the achievement of progress, no-one is happy to pay. Neither the public system, nor the insurance, nor the patient. ;-) And it is part of our documentation to each provider to justify our intervention and demonstrate achievement....
Now this is all terribly generalised and it feels quite awkward to write it down, but there you go.
everyone - please feel free to also make comments!!!!
Cheers,
Andrea