IT IS essential for general practitioners and dentists to provide detailed receipts and invoices ("Clamp down on doctoring of claims" by Mr Paul Chan Poh Hoi; last Friday).
This is the first step towards transparency. Patients will not only know the actual bill amount, but can also act as the first line of defence against fraudulent claims.
If the patient believes he has been overcharged, he can alert the Ministry of Health. This can deter health-care practitioners from making inflated claims.
There must be proper accounting to ensure invoices issued to patients tally with claims submitted to the ministry.
This practice should extend to private insurance claims by doctors. In such cases, patients make a co-payment, usually in cash, but have no idea how much is billed to the insurance company.
Usually, no receipts or invoices are issued, so patients are unable to check if services for which they were billed were indeed provided.
To contain health-care costs, we need a system of checks to prevent abuse of claims.
Patrick Tan Choon Hong
This is the first step towards transparency. Patients will not only know the actual bill amount, but can also act as the first line of defence against fraudulent claims.
If the patient believes he has been overcharged, he can alert the Ministry of Health. This can deter health-care practitioners from making inflated claims.
There must be proper accounting to ensure invoices issued to patients tally with claims submitted to the ministry.
This practice should extend to private insurance claims by doctors. In such cases, patients make a co-payment, usually in cash, but have no idea how much is billed to the insurance company.
Usually, no receipts or invoices are issued, so patients are unable to check if services for which they were billed were indeed provided.
To contain health-care costs, we need a system of checks to prevent abuse of claims.
Patrick Tan Choon Hong
