The federal government has finally begun advertising its specialist fee site, years after it was launched amid promises of ending bill shock.
Videos to be run online and in GP waiting rooms pitch the database as a one-stop-shop to “take the surprise out of private medical costs” with “tips to confidently discuss fees with your specialist”.
Posters distributed to medical practices around the country also herald an easy way to find “typical costs” for common health treatments, with the government also creating brochures and resources for interested parties to post on social media promoting the site.
It comes more than four years after the site was first unveiled, with then-health minister Greg Hunt pledging a new era of transparency for medical fees.
“We have worked with medical specialists, consumers, private health insurers and hospitals to develop the Medical Costs Finder,” he said at the time.
“The website was also informed by consumer research and testing, to deliver the results patients and their families want and need.”
Relaunched at the start of 2023 with capability to publish the actual fees of individual specialists, the site has remained essentially a ghost town. A search by the limbic identified only five doctors listed as of last week: two gastroenterologists and three surgeons.
And that number is showing little signs of rising, at least based on a webinar for interested specialists that we tuned into last year in which we were the only attendee.
Still, the site does hold some useful functionality, including aggregate data collected by Medicare showing the average costs of many services broken down by specialty as well as fee breakdowns detailing typical additional procedural charges such as anesthetist and hospital fees.
Make doctors use site, say private health funds
Meanwhile, the private health insurance industry is arguing all specialists should be forced to reveal their fees on the site to put a lid on what it describes as rampant fee inflation.