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Kelleher said 1300 medical items were listed on the website, of which just 150 had fees listed. About 640,000 people had viewed the website since it was launched in 2019, he said, while the total amount spent up to this financial year was $24.2 million.
“So over $1 million per doctor on the website?” Pocock asked.
“If the metric is solely those doctors who have decided to list their fees. Our metric is how many people visit, how many services do we have information on,” Kelleher responded.
“You could have the vast majority of people who visit being bitterly disappointed,” the senator said.
Pocock told this masthead he was concerned the website was “yet another example of huge waste of scarce taxpayer resources”.
“With so few doctors’ fees on the website, it’s hard to see how it is in any way helping people to shop around for surgery or to increase competition in the healthcare market,” he said.
Private Healthcare Australia chief executive Rachel David said more transparency was required given recent data collected by her organisation showed private procedures had soared by hundreds of dollars. She said health funds could not keep chasing doctors’ rising out-of-pocket fees without contributing to health inflation or bumping up consumer premiums.
“Consumers should be able to check what doctors are charging and shop around. Paying more for treatment doesn’t guarantee a better outcome,” she said.
“We need to do everything possible to protect consumers with private health insurance from bill shock. This will keep our private sector strong and keep pressure off the public system.”
Chief executive of the Consumers Health Forum, Elizabeth Deveny, said the patient advocacy group continued to be disappointed by the small number of doctors adding their fees to the website.
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“We know there is a need for this service. Australians absolutely want an easy way to find out how much their medical procedure or appointment will cost them,” she said.
“Really, it is about fairness. We need to see more practitioners, particularly specialists, play ball.”
Of the 20 doctors who had uploaded their fees to the website, one was Australian Medical Association president Steve Robson. In a YouTube video posted last month by the AMA, he joined the health department in encouraging other doctors to participate.
“We all know how important fee transparency and informed financial consent is for our patients, and one of the ways we can support our patients is by including our fees in the medical cost finder,” he said.
“The changes the department has made mean fewer steps and a much faster process. I’d say it took me less than five minutes.”
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