Only 20 doctors are disclosing their fees on the federal government’s $24m medical costs comparison website, despite the health department encouraging patients to shop around for affordable specialist care.
The Medical Costs Finder website was a $2.5m initiative launched in 2019 by the former Coalition government to help patients find and understand typical costs for private procedures.
The government then allocated a further $17m in 2020 to encourage individual doctors to disclose their voluntary fees on the website, which would allow patients to see how much they would pay in out of pocket costs.
But a Senate estimates hearing was told on Thursday that there were only 20 doctors that had listed fees on the “individual fee disclosure element” of the website.
The disclosure came in response to the independent senator David Pocock’s questions about what he said were the “astounding” out of pocket fees people in the ACT were paying for surgery in private health care.
The example Pocock said he found particularly “staggering” was gallbladder removal neomg $1,500 more expensive in the ACT when every other jurisdiction is $600 or less.
Pocock, citing Private Healthcare Australia data, said the typical cost of a hip replacement in the ACT was $4,093, compared with $2,547 in New South Wales and $400 in South Australia.
Penny Shakespeare, a deputy secretary in the health department, replied that varying out of pocket costs were primarily due to the individual decisions by surgeons as to how much they charge.
Shakespeare recommended patients use the Medical Costs Finder website to compare fees with the average costs for procedures before they agree to them.
When Pocock asked how many doctors fees were registered on the Medicare cost finder website, he replied with incredulity when Brian Kelleher, an assistant secretary in the health department, confirmed the national figure was 20..
“Ms Shakespare you just told me people can go to the website and see the different fees and make their mind up and now you tell me your website has 20 doctors in Australia with their fees,” Pocock said.
Shakespeare replied: “There are different parts to the website. There are individual doctors able to disclose their particular fees and then we have average fees broken down by jurisdictions.”
“How does that assist people to shop around if there’s 20 doctors with their fees?” Pocock said.
Pocock suggested the $24.2m spent on the website equated to “over a million dollars per doctor on the website”.
Kelleher said 640,000 people have visited the website, which provides information on 1,300 medical items and 150 services.
Pocock said he believed the user numbers could reflect an experience where “the vast majority of people who visit [are] bitterly disappointed”.
In a statement issued on Thursday, Private Healthcare Australia said out of pocket costs for common procedures in private hospitals had increased by up to 300% over the last five years.
The peak body for health funds has previously called for all specialist doctors’ fees to be published on the Medical Cost Finder site.
“When people receive a serious clinical diagnosis, they are at their most vulnerable. There is a massive information asymmetry between a medical specialist and the average consumer, which can easily be exploited,” the peak body’s Dr Rachel David said.
The Australian Medical Association, the peak body for doctors, has launched a recent push to encourage their members to disclose their fees.
