The Federal Government’s long-awaited medical fee transparency website has been labelled “totally useless” in its failure to allow patients to look up the names of individual specialists, let alone find details of their fees.

The so-called Medical Costs Finder, launched in late December, was built to help patients avoid ‘bill shock’ from unexpected medical expenses.

The Minister for Health, Greg Hunt, had promised the searchable database of specialists and their fees — starting with oncologists, obstetricians and gynaecologists — would be up and running by 1 January 2020.

However, the new site currently only allows patients to search for the “typical” out-of-pocket costs associated with 62 common in-hospital procedures conducted in their local primary health network area.