jonas ho

Review of Singapore National Eye Centre

The initial SMS sent quoted a price of $179 for co...

The initial SMS sent quoted a price of $179 for consultation. On the day of consultation, the nurse+lab tech advised me that the doctor requests further tests to be done for all his patients. These all added up to $330 in the end for the first consultation. The staff will provide you with a false choice: "the doctor recommends it but it is your choice to do it". Who would say no? They would also try to show transparency after-the-fact by telling you the cost of the additional tests; the tests that were not transparently communicated in the first place.

I chose SNEC because I thought that pricing would be transparent. It is rather obvious that they are banking on the fact that you would be willing to pay already since you've decided to come for a lasik consultation.

Further, I have just accidentally poked my left eye while applying anti bacterial drops and I'm feeling a bit of discomfort and pressure. The clinic has advised me to come down for a look but the cost would be $130+ meds excluding GST. I think that the pricing is a huge joke and if you want more personalized care that you should not go to SNEC. I refuse to believe that a smaller private clinic doctor would charge another $130+gst just to take a quick look at my eye to confirm nothing is wrong, or at least a smaller private clinic doctor who wants to maintain patient-doctor r/s for referrals will not charge that kind of money. My LASEK procedure was only 8 days ago.

As an aside, price for everything is inflated imo. Do you know the regular test where someone asks you to hold up a piece of spoon and requests that you read aloud what the board says? That costs $10 excl gst. This is an activity that requires no medical knowledge, low tech technical equipment, and mine just took 10 secs. Maybe such pricing is also reflected the same in other private clinics, so I guess my point is that medical fees in general are inflated.

My main point is still that if you want more personalized care and better transparency (ironically) maybe a smaller private clinic would be better. Or an actual private hospital may be better. Don't go to SNEC.

Having looked through some of the reviews here, I could agree with both the poorer ones and also with the better ones.

However please know that the general standard of medical care and professionalism of the staff will be the same across all the clinics, whether at SNEC or at other private clinics, so do not choose SNEC because of these reasons

The differentiators are the little things like what I've mentioned above (e.g. unpersonalised care, transparency issues). Maintaining a stream of patients to treat is more difficult for other private clinics than for SNEC therefore these clinics have to act more competitively within themselves and also between themselves and SNEC to keep their businesses going. So you will more than likely receive better personalized care in such places.

Check out other clinics and talk to others who have undergone treatments in other clinics, it may br worth your while shopping around before deciding.