WP’s Gerald Giam calls for measures to protect patients’ interests in Singapore healthcare system

SINGAPORE: Workers’ Party MP Gerald Giam called for fee benchmarks for medical procedures, an expanded panel of doctors and itemised hospital bills in an adjournment motion in Parliament on Monday .

This comes after Parliament debated the Integrated Shield Plans earlier on Monday during question time. Senior Minister of State for Health Koh Poh Koon had said that the Ministry of Health will study whether Integrated Shield Plans can be made"fully portable", but this could result in higher premiums.Integrated Shield Plans offer private insurance coverage on top of MediShield Life, Singapore's national health insurance scheme.

“Currently, the lower and upper bound of the fee range is set at around the 25th and 75th percentile respectively of the fees for that surgical procedure. Based on feedback I gathered from doctors and insurers, this may be too wide a range to take effective reference from. It may be more useful to set the fee benchmarks to a narrower 40th to 60th percentile of each fee range,” he added.

There were also “other factors”, including a rapid increase in rents for private hospitals, that led to rising healthcare costs, said Mr Giam. Those factors combined could have created “a perfect storm”, which accounts for much of the “rapid growth” of the cost of private healthcare. “By providing more transparency on doctors’ fees, they can help narrow the perennial problem in healthcare - information asymmetry between patients, doctors and insurers. However, to be effective in helping stakeholders manage costs better, the fee benchmarks need to be more comprehensive.”

READ: Government committee to be set up to look into management of Integrated Shield Plans, panel doctors To further reduce the “information asymmetry” between healthcare providers and consumers, MOH in 2017 appointed an independent multi-stakeholder committee to develop and recommend fee benchmarks for the private sector, said Dr Koh.Touching on the topic of doctors available to policyholders under Integrated Shield Plans, Mr Giam said the panels should be expanded to all doctors who wish to be on them, said Mr Giam.

He argued that the Government would have to lead the changes for all doctors and insurers. “No insurer will be willing to be the first mover on this because of competitive pressures. Insurers also cannot coordinate these changes among themselves, lest it be deemed anti-competitive.”

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