"MOH publishes fee benchmarks for surgical procedures in private hospitals
SINGAPORE: Patients who opt to do surgical procedures at private hospitals will now be able to get a better sense of their medical bills beforehand, with benchmarks on professional fees being made available from Tuesday (Nov 13).
The benchmark fees for 222 common surgical procedures, including Caesarean section, heart bypass and knee replacement, are published on the Ministry of Health (MOH) website. They make up more than 85 per cent of surgical procedures done in private hospitals on Singaporeans in 2017.
As an example, the professional fee for a single knee replacement surgery ranges from S$8,250 to S$10,700. But that doesn't mean that a doctor is necessarily overcharging if the fees are above the benchmark, Dr Lim said.
“The doctor may have a good reason to quote a higher fee for the particular surgery for the patient,” he said. He gave the example of a patient with an underlying kidney failure or heart disease.
“You have to do extra monitoring. The surgery may have to be done under certain conditions that are more complicated than the usual surgery.”"
Hmm. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
For me, private medical care can be charged at whatever price the patients can pay!! e.g. the famous or infamous Dr Susan Lim's multimillion dollar medical bill case.
For the PUBLIC medical services, the fee must b a cost plus n with a certain "reasonable margin" so that they r sustainable.
Of course, gov subsidy will then come in play for any qualifying cases where the qualification criteria r unequivocally spelt out n made known to everyone!!
Public medical care prices MUST NEVER b correlate in anyway to tje private ones.
Of course some will argue that the "best" doctors will flow to the lucrative private medical sector, which may be true. Yet, if ALL our doctors r just money driven primarily, i cannot see how our society can b united in the long term.
A society where doctors r all money face; it is doomed.
SINGAPORE: Patients who opt to do surgical procedures at private hospitals will now be able to get a better sense of their medical bills beforehand, with benchmarks on professional fees being made available from Tuesday (Nov 13).
The benchmark fees for 222 common surgical procedures, including Caesarean section, heart bypass and knee replacement, are published on the Ministry of Health (MOH) website. They make up more than 85 per cent of surgical procedures done in private hospitals on Singaporeans in 2017.
As an example, the professional fee for a single knee replacement surgery ranges from S$8,250 to S$10,700. But that doesn't mean that a doctor is necessarily overcharging if the fees are above the benchmark, Dr Lim said.
“The doctor may have a good reason to quote a higher fee for the particular surgery for the patient,” he said. He gave the example of a patient with an underlying kidney failure or heart disease.
“You have to do extra monitoring. The surgery may have to be done under certain conditions that are more complicated than the usual surgery.”"
Hmm. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
For me, private medical care can be charged at whatever price the patients can pay!! e.g. the famous or infamous Dr Susan Lim's multimillion dollar medical bill case.
For the PUBLIC medical services, the fee must b a cost plus n with a certain "reasonable margin" so that they r sustainable.
Of course, gov subsidy will then come in play for any qualifying cases where the qualification criteria r unequivocally spelt out n made known to everyone!!
Public medical care prices MUST NEVER b correlate in anyway to tje private ones.
Of course some will argue that the "best" doctors will flow to the lucrative private medical sector, which may be true. Yet, if ALL our doctors r just money driven primarily, i cannot see how our society can b united in the long term.
A society where doctors r all money face; it is doomed.
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