If you\u2019ve visited a specialist recently, you may have felt the hit to your hip pocket. Patients are paying hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars out of pocket for healthcare as some doctors charge not just double, but triple, the Medicare rebate.<\/p>\n
While GPs face pressure to bulk bill, there is no similar conversation about non-GP specialists, despite the fact they are also trained in the public system and remunerated through Medicare, experts told Guardian Australia when we recently wrote about this issue<\/a>.<\/p>\n The effectiveness of the government\u2019s much-derided Medical Costs Finder website is limited by the fact that as of March<\/a> only 70 specialists \u2013 out of 11,000 registered to practise \u2013 choose to voluntarily display their fee information<\/a>. But even if there was more transparency around costs, there is no policy in place that would actually lower these fees.<\/p>\n Non-profit Patients Australia says<\/a> part of the problem is that specialist doctors are increasingly adding a \u201cbooking fee\u201d or an \u201cadministration fee\u201d to the patient\u2019s bill. This practice, known as split billing, not only raises the price but also means the extra cost is invisible to the government and private insurers.<\/p>\n Share your experience<\/p>\n Whether it\u2019s a surgeon or physician, psychiatrist or gynaecologist, we want to hear about your experiences accessing specialist care and what you\u2019re being charged.<\/p>\n Please share your story if you are 18 or over, anonymously if you wish. For more information please see our terms of service<\/a> and privacy policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re having trouble using the form click here<\/a>. Read terms of service here<\/a> and privacy policy here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019ve visited a specialist recently, you may have felt the hit to your hip pocket. Patients are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500],"class_list":["post-102834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}