Nationwide disclosure of non-covered care prices makes treatment-cost preparation tools possible

Prices once asked hospital by hospital are now in one place

On September 3, 2026, the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service (HIRA, 건강보험심사평가원), Korea’s health-insurance review agency, published non-covered care fees—medical services not paid by Korea’s National Health Insurance—for 74,449 medical institutions nationwide on its website and the Health e-um app (건강e음). The release covers 753 items, up 60 from 693 in 2025. This is no longer a small sample of hospitals: it creates a basis for finding prices across the country by region and hospital size.

People can enter a service name, such as manual therapy, extracorporeal shock wave therapy, magnetic resonance imaging, or a zirconia implant, then narrow results by region and type of medical institution. Opening the detailed result also shows conditions that affect the price, including treatment time, body part, and materials used. From this year, users can also see treatment-material information associated with the care.

The price gaps are not small. In examples for clinic-level institutions provided by HIRA, extracorporeal shock wave therapy had a median price of KRW 70,000 and a highest price of KRW 175,000. For zirconia implants, the figures were KRW 1.1 million and KRW 1.72 million. Services with the same name may appear identical, but the implant example shows a gap of KRW 620,000—and therefore many conditions to check.

Of 593 items that can be compared across both 2025 and 2026, 337 saw wider price differences between medical institutions, more than half of the total. HIRA notes, however, that services with the same name can have different prices when their clinical difficulty, staffing, equipment, or detailed contents differ. Published prices are not quality scores or final quotations. They are a starting point for questions.

Users can currently search non-covered care prices by medical institution through HIRA’s website and the Health e-um app. Whether an official connection route for automatically receiving current institution-level prices, or bulk files, is available to external services must be confirmed with HIRA’s Non-Covered Care Management Department.

Prepare questions before searching for the lowest price

Imagine a 47-year-old office worker in Suwon looking into a zirconia implant for their mother, who lives in Gwangju. Today, they choose three hospitals on a map, move between each hospital’s website and HIRA’s pages, and copy each hospital name and published price three times. They then call every hospital to ask again whether examination fees, treatment materials, anesthesia, and follow-up care are included.

The problem is that even after getting answers, they are hard to compare immediately. One hospital may quote the price for one implant, while another may quote a price for using a particular material. The published price and the price heard by phone may have different reference dates, or the mother’s condition may require additional care.

The first step for a new service is to direct a user to the relevant HIRA search route after they enter a treatment name and region. The user saves prices for three hospitals of interest themselves, and the service places checkboxes beside each price: per session or per body part, whether materials are included, and whether examinations and anesthesia are separate. Even before an automated connection exists, it can begin by linking the official page with user-entered information.

The second step is to create sentences for asking hospitals. For example: “Is the published KRW 1.1 million the final amount for the care I will receive? Please tell me the product name, specification, and quantity of treatment materials, and whether examination fees, anesthesia, and follow-up care are included.” During the call, users check off answers and record the date and department that gave the guidance.

After the call, the service does not rank hospitals from cheapest upward. It shows the published price, phone quotation, included costs, and unanswered items for all three hospitals in the same order. It marks prices with unmatched conditions as “difficult to compare directly,” so one low number does not drive the decision.

What becomes cheaper in this process is not the care itself, but the effort of collecting and reorganising information. Instead of writing down each hospital’s different explanation in a blank note, users follow prepared questions and fill in only the missing answers. Hospitals, too, can send guidance that organises included items and possible additional costs rather than repeatedly explaining the same details by phone.

Some work still clearly belongs to people. Clinicians need to explain what treatment is needed, what differences in materials and equipment mean for the patient, and how likely additional treatment may be. The service should not recommend care or make claims about quality. It should stop at helping patients avoid missing price conditions and questions before hearing the explanation.

Other countries designed for action after disclosure

NH HealthCost, run by the New Hampshire Insurance Department, a state insurance regulator in the United States, compares expected outpatient costs by insurance type and region using claims data. It compares expected costs at medical institutions for imaging tests such as MRI, CT, and X-ray, as well as outpatient care, and continues to operate as a public tool for residents to find expected costs by institution.

In research summarised by the Congressional Budget Office, prices for imaging tests subject to disclosure fell by about 4% relative to comparison services, but only about 8% of people used price information for high-cost imaging. Even when prices are accurate, a search service alone may not change behaviour much if it does not reach people when they need it.

The US federal Hospital Price Transparency rule has required hospitals since 2021 to disclose cash prices and insurer-specific negotiated prices, among other information. Hospitals must publish files in a common machine-readable format—files computers can read automatically—and consumer-facing price information, creating a basis for private services to process the prices as well.

But the US Government Accountability Office noted that patients rarely use hospital price lists and hospitals’ own calculators, and that the completeness and accuracy of disclosed data need continuing review. Opening data and helping patients understand and use it before they book are different tasks.

The Australian government’s Medical Costs Finder lets users enter a service name or public-insurance billing item number and postcode to see usual local fees, insurance rebates, and a range of possible out-of-pocket costs. It provides both average cost information accumulated by the government and individual fees from some voluntarily participating specialists.

However, only 70 doctors had uploaded individual fees by early 2025. Nationwide average-price guidance was possible, but there were major gaps in comparisons detailed enough to choose a specific doctor. A service that relies only on voluntary input from hospitals could face the same problem in Korea.

Small things to build from here

1. Hospital call question cards

• What it does: When a user selects a non-covered care item, it creates questions to confirm price conditions and additional costs, then saves each hospital’s answers in the same order.
• Who uses it: An office worker checking implant or magnetic resonance imaging costs for a parent who lives in another region.
• Why now: Nationwide published prices can serve as a starting point, so users no longer need to gather the basis for questions and candidate hospitals from scratch.
• First screen: Three fields for the care item, treatment region, and number of hospitals to compare.

2. Pre-treatment total-cost organiser

• What it does: It adds examination fees, material costs, anesthesia, number of sessions, and follow-up care to a hospital’s stated base price, showing what is included and what is missing.
• Who uses it: A patient expecting multiple sessions of manual therapy or extracorporeal shock wave therapy, who needs to consider both the per-session price and the total number of sessions.
• Why now: Published care items and treatment materials can be found together, making it easier to ask separately about the base price and surrounding costs.
• First screen: The user photographs a hospital quotation or enters amounts directly, then selects “Check what is included.”

3. Non-covered care explanation maker for hospitals

• What it does: A hospital enters frequently asked non-covered care prices, applicable conditions, separate costs, and an effective date; the tool creates guidance for text messages, websites, and print.
• Who uses it: Reception staff at neighbourhood dental clinics and clinics that repeatedly receive daily calls about implant or vaccination prices.
• Why now: If more patients call after seeing official published prices, hospitals also need to explain the difference between the published figure and actual conditions consistently.
• First screen: A form for the item name, published price, included items, costs that may be added, and start date of application.

4. Family treatment decision record

• What it does: It keeps hospitals researched by family members, published prices, clinicians’ explanations, appointment dates, and reasons for a choice in one place for sharing.
• Who uses it: Families in which siblings live apart and jointly research a hospital for a parent’s cataract surgery or implant.
• Why now: Hospital-level prices can serve as a shared starting point, making it easier to combine different search results and call notes from each family member.
• First screen: After choosing a family member and care item, users see two buttons: “Add hospital” and “Record explanation.”

Why this matters where you are

Korea’s nationwide disclosure of non-covered care prices is a Korean condition, shaped by HIRA’s public data and the country’s health-insurance system. In your own market, check whether official prices exist, whether they include treatment conditions, and whether they can be reused by other services. Where price data is incomplete or not directly comparable, the opportunity may be less about ranking providers and more about helping people record questions, answers, and missing costs.

What to check in 30 minutes today

Choose either a zirconia implant or extracorporeal shock wave therapy on HIRA, find three hospitals in the same region, and ask all three the same questions about included costs and possible additional costs. If two or more answers use different formats or include different items, making comparison difficult without notes, it may be worth building a service that organises questions and answers before building a lowest-price search tool.