MOH urges transparency in billings

12 Jun 2008, Today

Question

Name of the Person: David Kwok Ng Kan

I want my receipt, doc

I READ with concern media reports that some general practitioners (GPs) insist on not issuing itemised receipts to patients even when they ask for them.

As it has been made compulsory for GPs to issue receipts since April this year, they should comply and issue them even when patients do not ask for them.

What redress does a patient have in the face of a doctor’s non-compliance? To whom can the patient turn?

Reply

Reply from MOH 

MOH urges transparency in billings

In  “I want my receipt, doc” (TDY, 7 June 08), Mr David Kwok asked whom a patient should turn to if a doctor refuses to issue itemized receipts even when asked.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) expects our doctors to be open and transparent with their patients on their medical bills, since we issued the guideline on bill itemisation last October.  All doctors have been directly informed by MOH so they should know about it. The itemised bill can be handwritten or a computer printout.

Giving patients itemised bills is particularly useful where the bills are large.  Examples of such bills would be those billed by specialists, where the patient requires multiple medications.  Such patients may want to know how much they are being charged for their various medicines.  Itemisation of such bills will help the patients decide if it would be more cost effective to fill the prescriptions elsewhere. 

Patients who are unable to obtain itemised bills from their doctors despite their requests may feed this back to our Ministry at 1800-225 4122 orMOH_info@moh.gov.sg.