It Was Utterly Predictable This Web Initiative From The Federal Government Would Fail. Hard To Know Why They Press On!

This appeared last week:

'Patients the losers' despite $17m lift for 'white elephant' medical costs website

By Dana McCauley

October 11, 2020 — 11.40pm

The federal government's decision to pour another $17 million into its medical costs finder website – dubbed a "white elephant" due to its failure to tell patients how much they will actually have to pay for procedures – has attracted scorn from patient groups and doctors.

A Health Department spokesman said the additional funding would be used to develop "the individual fee disclosure component" of the website it spent $2.5 million building last year, but that doctor participation would be voluntary.

Australian Patients Association chief executive Stephen Mason said the website was a white elephant that "won’t put an end to out-of-pocket bill shock for patients", and that the $17 million funding boost would not "improve fee transparency".

"We will be surprised if any additional doctors and specialists will voluntarily agree to sign up to list their fees," Mr Mason said. "So, again, patients are the losers."

Australian Medical Association president Omar Khorshid said he did not expect many doctors would publish their fees on the website, which was "a complete failure" and "should be abandoned".

"Until the website can actually give an individual patient confidence about what gap they might be facing compared with other practitioners, then it's not going to be useful at all," Dr Khorshid said.

Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy director Henry Cutler said the fact participation was voluntary meant it would be "impossible for patients to determine value for money" by searching the website.

The latest official data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows Australians spent $30 billion on out-of-pocket medical costs in 2017-18.

More here:

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/patients-the-losers-despite-17m-lift-for-white-elephant-medical-costs-website-20201009-p563mu.html

There is additional coverage here:

Doctors' fees site wins more Govt funding

Despite criticism over its usefulness, the federal budget pledged a further $17 million for the Medical Costs Finder website

14th October 2020

By Heather Saxena

The Federal Government is ploughing another $17 million into its controversial specialist fees website, after admitting efforts to promote the platform stalled due to the pandemic.

The new funding, revealed in 2020-21 federal budget papers, will be used to ‘enhance’ the Medical Costs Finder website, by including voluntary fee disclosure from specialists “to increase the transparency of out-of-pocket costs”.

“This will enable patients and their referring doctors to be more informed when choosing a specialist and help people to better understand the value in having PHI [private health insurance],” according to the budget papers.

The papers also reveal an education campaign to raise patient awareness of the website was paused “due to priorities shifting to the COVID-19 pandemic”.

But the aim in 2020-21 is "greater functionality and cost information for a wider range of medical specialists, and [to] support these activities with appropriate education material”.

Launched on 30 December last year, the $2.5 million website was meant to address the explosion of out-of-pocket costs leading patients to set up crowdfunding campaigns to pay for their operations.

But a few weeks after the launch, a GP who has his own similar site derided it as “totally useless”.

More here:

https://www.ausdoc.com.au/news/doctors-fees-site-wins-more-govt-funding

All the points made in the two articles seem spot on to me. Voluntary disclosure of commercially sensitive information we never going to work!

Good money after bad I reckon!

David.