ANAESTHETIC FEES
We will provide clear & transparent communication regarding your anaesthetic fees.
How we calculate your fees.
Your anaesthetic fees attract a separate fee to those charged by your surgeon, surgical assistant, and hospital. We are not employees of the surgeon or the hospital; we are independent specialist medical practitioners who calculate our fees independently of other anaesthetists. This can be why you, as a patient, may receive a different fee estimate for the same procedure with different surgeons and anaesthetists.
The AMA (Australian Medical Association) and ASA (Australian Society of Anaesthetists) provide a fee schedule for a list of services indexed annually. These are carefully calculated based on factors such as: Inflation, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), and Average Weekly Earnings (AWE). We base our fees on this schedule.
MBS Annual Indexation
(a) Index comprising of AWE (Average Weekly Earnings) and CPI (Consumer Price Index) (70:30)
(b) Index of Medicare fees as determined by the Commonwealth Government.
Your payable fees are determined by several factors, including the nature and complexity of your surgery; the level of anaesthetic intervention required; and the combined surgical and anaesthetic duration. It is usually possible to obtain an estimate prior to your procedure from our rooms, however, as some of these factors are unpredictable, the actual fees may differ from this estimate.
There is often a private health insurance shortfall between our fee and your rebate. The private health insurance shortfall is payable by you. The size of this shortfall varies according to the level of cover provided by your health fund as well as the Commonwealth Medical Benefit Schedule (MBS), which is the amount the government is prepared to reimburse you for the medical services you have been provided. Regrettably, this does not reflect the true value of the anaesthetic services provided to you.
This has arisen over the last 35 years, where the annual indexation of the MBS has consistently been less than inflation, whilst practice costs increase year on year.
Similarly, there may be a shortfall between our fee and the rebate provided by your Work Cover insurer or the Transport Accident Commission (TAC). This shortfall is payable by you.
We are committed to providing clear and transparent quotes in advance and managing your expectations where possible.