Surgery costs by state and how they compare in Australia

Patients can face huge out of pocket medical expenses depending on which state they live in. Use our online tool to see what you will pay.

Exclusive: Patients living in NSW, Queensland and the ACT are more likely to face out of pocket medical expenses, than any other state.

And our investigation found the ACT is the most expensive place in the country to go under the knife.

From hip replacements to cataracts and endoscopies, patients in the nation’s capital pay the highest gap fees for 18 out of 25 common surgery types.

Typically the doctor’s fees for a hip replacement are $6100 in the ACT but the same operation costs $4100 in Western Australia and $4900 in Queensland.

The typical doctor’s fees for a knee replacement in the ACT are $6800 and $5200 in NSW but in Tasmania it costs just $3900.

NSW is the most expensive state to have a baby in the private system with four in ten women facing gap payments of around $490.

In Queensland, 83 per cent of women have no gap fees for a birth in a private hospital and where an out of pocket fee is paid it’s typically $270.

FIND THE CHEAPEST SURGERY: USE OUR ONLINE TOOL

Victoria is the best place to have a radical prostatectomy with gap fees of just $1200 compared to the eye-watering typical out of pocket expense of $7200 in NSW and $4600 in Queensland.

Doctors in NSW are charging $11,000 for this surgery, in Queensland they charge $8700 but in Victoria the fees are $6800 and in South Australia they are even cheaper at $5800.

Asked whether doctors in Canberra charged more because their clientele were wealthier retired public servants, the ACT president of the Australian Medical Association Walter Abhayaratna agreed “it is certainly one of the possibilities”.

“It’s not our role to actually to take on the doctors who are providing the service for the highest amount and expose that practice. That’s not our role. Our role is to make sure the patient gets access to information about informed financial consent,” Dr Abhayaratna said.

Australian Orthopaedic Association President Michael Gillespie said fees charged by orthopaedic surgeons have to cover practice costs including employing receptionists and practice nurses, meeting operating expenses such as rent, medical equipment, electricity, computers and insurance and “regional variations in these fees are multifaceted”.

Here you can access information and questions you should ask your doctors before a procedure that will help ensure you fully understand any out of pocket surgery costs you might face.

Originally published as Surgery costs by state and how they compare in Australia