Health Minister Reviewing Medical Charges

 The Health Ministry hopes to revamp the ceiling price system to protect private hospital patients from being saddled with outrageously high medical bills.

Its Minister Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam said the ministry was in discussions with private hospitals to find a way to widen existing price controls on professional fees and other aspects of treatment.

“Under the 13th schedule, the ministry has set a cap on professional fees as well as consultancy fees, including consultancies during intensive care treatment and for those done by private dental clinics,” he said.

He, however, added that the ministry has no control over private hospital charges for admissions, nursing care, lab tests, medicines or disposable equipment.

Dr Subramaniam said this in reply to a question by Wong Chen (PKR-Kelana Jaya) in Parliament on Tuesday.

Wong had asked about measures to resolve the high cost of medical treatment at private hospitals, citing an example of a woman in Subang Jaya who had to settle a whopping RM450,000 medical bill when her husband was warded in a private hospital for two and a half months.

Wong said the woman then transferred her husband to a government hospital when his condition worsened as she could not afford to continue private treatment, but he died two weeks later.

In a supplementary question, Wong proposed that private hospitals should be made to charge not more than double the cost of the same treatment at a government hospital.

Dr Subramaniam acknowledged that patients in private hospitals are sometimes unable to estimate costs because they often do not know how long they would need to be warded, and if they suddenly require intensive care, the costs will quickly rise.

One of the methods the ministry is looking at to address this issue is called “bundling”, where private hospitals would get a single payment for all services it performed to treat a patient for one specific episode of care - such as heart surgery.

“If there is any extra treatment, it is a risk the hospitals must take,” said Dr Subramaniam.

He said that some foreign hospitals have already introduced this system.

“If the discussions between the ministry and the private hospitals here are successful, we can widen control on medical costs in this sector that is currently only limited to professional and consultancy fees,” he said.