Mothers-to-be in the city are being cautioned by the Consumer Council to take extra care when choosing maternity packages from private hospitals.

The council found after surveying private hospitals that nine out of the 10 had raised their prices since May 2010.

The results of the survey, released on Thursday, show that maternity packages in private hospitals are lacking in transparency.

That has resulted in a surge in the number of complaints to the Consumer Council.

The council said 26 complaints were recorded up until November - that's eight times higher than last year, and 13 times the number in 2009.

Among the 26 complaints this year, 22 involved price disputes. Fourteen of those complaints were filed in July when one of the private hospitals abruptly increased its fees.

Among the 10 hospitals, Precious Blood Hospital hiked its price between 45.4 percent for a normal delivery package and 48.9 percent for the caesarean section package. Hong Kong Baptist Hospital and St Teresa's Hospital also increased their fees by 30 percent.

"I believed that part of the reason for the price adjustment is that the public hospitals shut the door to mainland women who want to deliver their babies in the city, (thus forcing them to go to private hospitals), which led to the demand exceeding the supply of maternity beds in the market," said Connie Lau Yin-hing, chief executive of the council.

Wong Hin-chai, Precious Blood Hospital's administration manager, said the adjustment resulted from increased operating costs, including higher salaries and additional manpower.

In one complaint, a woman who had reserved the maternity service in June, was stunned to find out that her bill was hiked by HK$25,000 over what she expected. Her husband subsequently discovered additional charges for various items, along with an administration fee of HK$15,000 about which they had not been informed in advance. At the request of the doctor, the woman underwent a caesarean section one hour ahead of her scheduled time. That resulted in an additional charge of HK$5,000, for emergency services.

"A lot of the items were not detailed in leaflets and needed extra payments," complained a woman whose surname is Chiang.

She was told fetal heart monitoring during labor was included in the maternity package. Later she learned that the package included only one hour of monitoring. Chiang was required to pay an additional HK$1,500 for the five hours she used. She was also charged another HK$500 for delivering during non-office hours without prior notice.

Secretary for Food and Health York Chow called on private hospitals to review the content of their maternity packages and to increase the transparency of the services.

He said private hospitals have been increasing their charges for the last three years; however, there are still a lot of extra charges that are undisclosed, even after patients have signed up for the package.

stushadow@chinadailyhk.com

China Daily

(HK Edition 12/16/2011 page1)