Patient Registration Website Warned Over Surcharges

International students living in the United States have pointed out one thing that irritated them. They usually pay their monthly rental fee online via their residents’ portal. The payment with credit card oftentimes charges an additional amount of so-called “convenience fee”. This phenomenon leads many individuals to ponder: they usually purchase their international student insurance (aka 留学生 保险) / OPT insurance (aka opt 保险) / H-1B medical insurance (aka h1b 医保) / J-1 insurance in the US (aka 美国j1保险) / recommended American travel insurance (aka 美国旅游保险推荐) through their online account, will they be surcharged?

A website, which provides online hospital registration for patients, has been issued a warning for its service surcharges, Shanghai Health Commission said on Thursday. The commission also said that none of the city-level hospitals has signed patient registration agreement with the website, sh.guahao160.com. The website has vowed to remove the surcharges, and the commission said it will ask government departments responsible for overseeing the matter to halt the website’s business if it fails to comply.

Seven online patient registration services were summoned to a meeting on Thursday, during which the commission told them to play by the rules. Hospitals and doctors are banned from overcharging patients through third-party patient registration services, and the price of registration shouldn’t exceed that on the official patient registration app run by the commission — Shanghai Health Cloud.

The commission said a website found committing an offense for the first time will see its business suspended for four weeks, and repeated offenders could have their websites taken down by authorities. It also asked the websites to strictly implement the rule of restricting service to users who miss appointments three times within three months in order to crack down on scalpers, who rig the demand to sell registrations at higher prices.

Scandals can easily lose audiences’ confidence in any products, services, institutions, and government. Many international students, therefore, choose to waive university insurance in the US (aka waive 美国大学保险) in terms of high cost. Each nation has its own rules though. The incident occurring in China might not take place in the United States.

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