How do Accounts & Fees work?
We endeavour to provide quality, cost effective and ethical health care without overburdening our patients financially.
Anaesthetic costs covered by medical aids vary from scheme to scheme, and even within a scheme between its different options. The level of cover and excess (co-payment or ‘gap’) is determined by your individual medical aid and plan option. It is important to remember that we have a contract with you, the patient, and not the medical aid. It is your responsibility to understand your medical aid benefits and co-payments. Medical aid societies have no right to dictate doctors’ fees for their professional service. However, medical aids do decide what they will reimburse to their policy holder. We recommend that all patients consider getting Gap Cover to bridge potential co-payments.
Charges
Your anaesthetic fee is separate from your hospital and surgeon’s fee. Your surgeon has chosen to collaborate with us as they feel we offer the anaesthetic care that allows them the best possible surgical outcome for you.
This practice charges a private rate. The rate is in line with some of the largest medical aid schemes in the country. Our fees are viewed by most medical aids as reasonable.
You will be responsible for payment of your account if there is any shortfall in payment from your medical aid, or where your medical aid fails to pay for any reason.
If you have Gap Cover Insurance, our bill will be covered in full. We do have payment arrangements with several medical aid plans. In addition, we have direct payment arrangements with some of the larger medical aids, which avoids co-payments completely.
Fee Structure
Our fees are based on the latest .
Anaesthetic fees consist of:
- the preoperative consultation
- time-based procedure fee
- clinical modifiers (severe disease, extremes of age or obesity)
- unplanned surgery, or an emergency fee irrespective of the time of day.
The preoperative consultation assesses your risk factors, which enables us to plan a safe and appropriate anaesthetic. Anaesthesiologists assess patients on the day of surgery. While the anaesthesiologist may only spend a few minutes with you, this time is used to effectively assess your medical history, perform a physical examination and determine anaesthetic risk factors for the surgery.
Cost Estimation and Preoperative Consultation
It is difficult to discuss finances in a busy hospital ward. We recommend you contact us for an anaesthetic cost estimate no later than 48 hours before your procedure.
We also offer a pre-admission consultation service for select high-risk cases that need investigations and optimisation prior to elective surgery. This service reduces the risk of cancellation of your booked procedure due to you not being medically fit for an anaesthetic.
Statements are mailed to patients every month.
Electronic Submission
All claims will be submitted electronically to medical aids registered at the QEDI system. It remains the patient’s responsibility to determine the amount payable by their medical aid, and whether payment will be made to the service provider or directly to the member.
Late payments
Amounts outstanding for more than 120 days will be handed over to our debt collectors for collection, and the patient will be responsible for additional costs incurred.