Hong Kong’s consumer supervisor called on the SAR government to take the lead in boosting price transparency within the private healthcare service, citing a number of issues found in service providers’ pricing mechanisms, such as significant price discrepancies among different organizations.

Despite relevant codes of practice having been in place since the introduction of the Private Healthcare Facilities Ordinance (PHFO) in 2018, cases involving unexplained price discrepancies, unclear medical bills, and related disputes are still frequent, according to a report released by the Consumer Council on Thursday.

From 2021 to 2024, the council received a total of 191 complaints related to private healthcare services, with the most significant case involving HK$2.3 million ($300,000).

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Such situations can primarily be attributed to consumers’ limited access to price information, inaccurate budget estimates made by healthcare facilities, and a general lack of awareness about making price comparisons.

The report revealed that 67.7 percent of the respondents did not conduct any price comparisons prior to seeking medical help, with 46.7 percent of them indicating they had not considered making compare prices.

The council highlighted the need for patients to be well prepared before engaging with private healthcare providers, and stressed that there can be substantial price variations among providers offering the same treatments. It noted a 152 percent price difference for comparable healthcare services as an example.

Many private healthcare facilities failed to provide adequate price disclosures, the council found. Fifteen out of the 20 sampled Day Procedure Centers (DPC) did not provide online price lists. While 13 private hospitals did include fee schedules on their websites, consumer feedback about them indicated they need to be more user-friendly.

Only 10.1 percent of the respondents who sought treatment in private hospitals checked their historical bill size data. Publishing such data is among the price transparency measures stipulated in the PHFO applicable to all private hospitals, said the council.

A further review noted that four private hospitals updated their data periodically, and none of the sampled day procedure centers had proactively joined similar data disclosure initiatives.

Although medical packages and budget estimates provide customers with more price certainty and price comparison benchmarks, their levels of availability and quality varied substantially among providers, the survey revealed.

Packages were available in 10 private hospitals for common colonoscopies, gastroscopies, and cesarean sections, but for most of the other 30 treatments recommended by the Department of Health to be included in budget estimates, availability turned out to be restricted, with all but one providing packages for only two such procedures.

The Consumer Council found there was a notable lack of detailed and clear fee breakdowns, and excluded items were often found in both medical package information and budget estimates, which made it challenging for consumers to make price comparisons.

According to the survey, 39 percent of respondents received only verbal budget estimates, which cannot be considered in any pricing disputes. This issue is particularly prevalent in DPCs, at a rate of 59 percent, according to the council.

As a result of its findings, the Consumer Council has put forward five recommendations with a view to narrowing the information asymmetry and enhancing a more transparent healthcare ecology. The recommendations center around optimizing consumers’ accessibility to price information, implementing packaged charges, ensuring written budget estimates are provided, optimizing the current regulatory framework, and improving the complaint handling mechanism.

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The government should spearhead implementing the recommendations, especially in cases involving multiple standardization issues, the council said. For instance, formal presentation guidelines would help with things such as price lists, historical bill size data, medical packages, and written budget estimates, to render more efficiency.

The level of compliance with the price transparency measures should also be considered when assessing private healthcare facilities’ license applications, said the council.

In the long run, the government can also leverage the power of big data to compile a common coding mechanism for more personalized package designs that consider the severity level of medical conditions, and a centralized historical price index database with a paired search tool, the council added.

Contact the writer at wanqing@chinadailyhk.com