A German doctor who recommends certain planned operations must tell the patient about a right. It is the right to a Zweitmeinung, an independent second medical opinion from another qualified doctor. The rule is Section 27b of Book V of the Social Code, introduced in 2015. The doctor must, as a rule, give this information at least ten working days before the planned operation. For some operations the period is fifteen working days. The Federal Joint Committee decides which operations are covered. Its guideline, published at the end of 2018, named two in 2019: tonsil operations and hysterectomies. According to the Deutsches Ärzteblatt, the law responded to a rise in the number of certain elective operations that medicine could hardly explain.