The government’s push to publish individual specialists’ fees could lead to some patients making poorly informed decisions based purely on worries about costs, a leading clinician has warned.
Professor Ian Olver, an oncologist and former head of Cancer Council Australia, said the recent flagging by Health department officials that specialists may be forced to disclose their fees for the government’s Medical Costs Finder website may have unintended consequences.
The site went live late last year and currently allows patients to search and view average out-of-pocket expenses for private medical services based on their location.
But the proposed extended model that would allow patients to compare individual clinicians’ prices would make it difficult for patients to know if they were ‘comparing apples with oranges,’ said Professor Olver, a researcher at the University of Adelaide.
He told the limbic the complexity involved in determining how specialists set their fees for various procedures and care meant cost alone was a “blunt tool” that failed to take into account important factors such as expertise and the likelihood of quality patient outcomes.
“If you’re providing additional services to patients in terms of their supported care [for example], it may be costing someone more to deliver that treatment in the private sector,” Professor Olver said.
“The government website, as it is at the moment, is informing people about when they’ll be gaps and what the extent of the gap is… [which] might be very useful.
“But once you start getting into individuals, it could be easily misused and it could actually not be interpreted as it should be which would be a shame really.”
Disclosure delays
Last month, Health Department secretary Professor Brendan Murphy told Senate estimates that there had already been “great buy-in from most of the medical profession” with regard to voluntarily disclosing their fees.