"How Much Are Medical Costs in My Neighborhood?"... National Health Insurance Service Revamps 'Non-covered Information Portal'

Enhanced User Convenience with Price Comparison Features and Regional Visualization
Medical Cost Prediction for 210 Inpatient Diseases Including Cerebral Hemorrhage and Cancer

From now on, patients will be able to easily compare non-covered medical expenses, which vary from hospital to hospital, via their smartphones and check the estimated costs for hospitalization in advance.

Mobile screen of the National Health Insurance Service's "Non-covered Information Portal".

On May 6, the National Health Insurance Service announced that it has revamped its 'Non-covered Information Portal' with a user-centered approach to strengthen patients' medical choices and enhance transparency in non-covered medical expenses. This portal provides information in one place about the prices of items not covered by health insurance, their safety and efficacy, and major disease- and surgery-specific medical costs.

In this overhaul, the National Health Insurance Service focused on upgrading the platform so that the public can more easily and intuitively understand complicated non-covered information and conveniently access the service in various environments, including on mobile devices.

Previously, information was mainly provided using simple arithmetic averages, which led to criticism that the figures did not reflect the actual perceived prices. To address this, the display method has been improved to focus on the median and minimum prices.

In particular, regional price differences are now visually identified on a map using color brightness, allowing users to intuitively see how medical costs in their neighborhood compare to the national average. In addition, a new feature allows users to directly compare price differences by selecting up to three specific items or up to four regions.

Based on claims data for health insurance medical benefits, the National Health Insurance Service has built the 'Medical Cost Information System (NHIS-MEIS)' to help predict hospitalization costs. By providing medical cost information for 210 major inpatient diseases, including cerebral hemorrhage and cervical cancer, which are of high public interest, the public can now better prepare for potential medical expenses when hospitalized.

Namhoon Kim, Executive Director of Benefits at the National Health Insurance Service, stated, "This revamp is significant in that it enables the public to predict the actual costs they may incur during medical treatment in advance," adding, "We will continue to improve the service to guarantee the public's right to know and to help alleviate their medical cost burden."

The revamped service can be accessed via the National Health Insurance Service website or through the mobile app 'Health Insurance 25 Hours.'

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.