Monthly Update On Hospital Bill Sizes

31 Oct 2003

Introduction

On Sept 29, the Ministry of Health began publishing statistics on hospital bills for 28 common medical conditions on its website. Henceforth, the statistics will be updated on the first of each month, on a 12-month moving average basis. The next update will be on Nov 1.

Updated data

The data presented on Nov 1 will cover the period from 1 October 2002 to 30 September 2003.

Wider Coverage

From Nov 1, statistics on hospital bills for another 22 common medical conditions will be added. This will bring the total number of medical conditions published on the Internet to 50. These 50 medical conditions account for about half of all admissions to the hospitals.

Full listing of the 50 medical conditions.

Improving precision

We have also refined the data to improve their precision. For instance, under 'glaucoma surgery', some doctors carry out multiple procedures in one sitting, e.g. glaucoma and cataract surgery. (These are the exceptions though.) We have therefore refined the data to include only cases involving a single procedure on a single eye. The refinement has reduced the variation of bill sizes, e.g. for 'Day surgery (subsidised)' the variance between the 50th and 90th percentile bill sizes without refinement was large ($276 to $1179), but it is reduced with refinement ($257 to $744).