MOH to publish total operation fees for common medical procedures

It will provide greater transparency on hospital bills.

The Ministry of Health will publish the total operation fees for 65 common medical procedures starting today, in a bid to increase transparency on the hospital bill component attributed to the cost of performing the surgery.

Since 2003, the MOHhas been publishing total hospital bill size data for the top medical conditions on MOH’s website.

Commencing with public sector hospitals, the website now features data for both public and private sector hospitals. The data is updated monthly, and has been well received as it helps both patients and healthcare providers to compare prices.

The data published are for common procedures treated in the public sector hospitals, as defined by the updated Table of Surgical Procedures (TOSP) which took effect for patients admitted for surgeries from 1 January 2014 onwards.

“To ensure statistical significance, only procedures with at least 30 cases will be published. We intend to progressively expand the list to cover other common procedures as they fulfil the threshold number of cases. he published statistics include (a) the 25th percentile, and (b) the 75th percentile total operation fees for each common procedure, to provide an indication of the range of fees for the particular procedure,” noted the MOH.