A price cannot be compared until you know what it buys. We publish one definition of scope, the same in every country, and hold every listed price to it, so a buyer can check a listing rather than take our word.
Information provided is for general reference only and does not constitute medical advice. Consult a qualified healthcare professional before making medical decisions.
A listed price on our platform is a committed range, a minimum and a maximum in US dollars, covering 7 named items from anaesthesia to complications resolved before the patient leaves. Bills above the range in more than 15 percent of bookings over 12 months are a material breach.
Sylk Health. Current as of October 2026.
Several of our earlier posts turn on the same point and none of them states it in full. A list price, a package and a quote are different objects because each draws its own boundary. A benchmark is only as good as the definition of what it measures. A dataset should be asked what its price includes before it is asked anything else. The answer in our case is a published standard, and this post sets it out, in the words providers are given when they list.
A procedure is a catalogue entry, and we write the description. "A procedure is an entry in Sylk Health's catalogue. You do not write procedure names or descriptions. You select from the catalogue the procedures your hospital performs, and the description a patient reads under each one is Sylk Health's own text, which you cannot edit."
The rule is deliberate: if each hospital named its own procedures, a buyer comparing two listings would be comparing two descriptions as well as two prices. The catalogue is also narrower than a service line: "One catalogue entry carries one price range", and different implant types and different surgical approaches are separate entries rather than variants of one.
A procedure is not a course of care, and the contract groups the booked procedure with what clinically follows it into one Episode, meaning the same course of treatment, anatomical site or International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) (opens in new tab) category within 365 days of the booking request. A genuinely distinct, clinically unrelated procedure is a separate booking.
A listed price is a range because two patients booked for the same operation may need a different length of stay or more theatre time. "A listed price is a commitment, not an estimate." The provider enters two figures: "You enter a minimum price and a maximum price in US dollars. Together they form the range you agree to treat that procedure within."
A single figure forces the provider either to quote every case as though it were the most complex or to absorb the difference when it is not. The instruction that follows is the one a buyer should care about: "The minimum is what a straightforward case costs. The maximum is the most you will charge for that procedure within the scope above", and "Do not set a maximum you would exceed."
The standard is stated as a single sentence and then itemised: "The range covers everything required for a standard execution of the procedure." Providers are asked to include seven things:
The test that governs the list is broader than the list: "If a cost is normally part of performing that procedure well, it belongs inside the range." A provider cannot list a low headline figure and invoice the pre-operative workup, the ward stay or the standard implant on top.
The last item is the one that separates this definition from most published prices. Complications arising while the patient is still with the provider are inside the range, because they are within that provider's control and already in its cost base. The boundary is drawn at the limit of the provider's control rather than at a number of days.
The table below sets our definition beside three published price forms quoted in our earlier posts, by where each draws its boundary.
Price form | Who draws the boundary | Where it ends | Complications | Standard implant |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Medicare surgical episode (TEAM), a target price | CMS | 30 days after the patient leaves hospital | Part A and B services in the episode, subject to an exclusion list; complications not itemised | Not itemised on the CMS page |
Bangkok Hospital hip and knee package | The hospital | The package duration, priced to 31 December 2026 | Outside | Outside, except the robot-assisted knee packages |
English self-pay quote | Hospital and consultant | As each quote states | A consultant's estimate must state services not included, such as those from unforeseeable complications | As each quote states |
Sylk Health listed range | One published definition, the same in every country | When the patient leaves the provider's care | Inside if resolved before the patient leaves | Inside |
Medicare's surgical model (opens in new tab) draws its boundary by time, and Bangkok Hospital's package page (opens in new tab) by the seller's list. England's competition order (opens in new tab) does not draw one at all; it requires each quote to say where its own boundary sits. Ours is drawn once, published, and held constant.
Four things sit outside it:
Two further points sit alongside that list of exclusions. Indirect taxes, regulatory fees and mandatory government charges follow the provider's own consumer-price-display law rather than this scope. Regulated pass-through items, meaning drugs, devices, implants or consumables whose price or markup is fixed or capped by law or by a government procurement scheme, "sit inside the range at their regulated price; they are excluded from the Commission Basis, not from what the patient sees." The costs outside the range are set out from the patient's side in our post on the cost lines a quoted price does not include.
A definition that pretended no case ever exceeds its maximum would not survive contact with surgery. The provider document says so directly: "A rare case will exceed the maximum, and that is not a failure of the range." What it requires is that the exceedance is agreed in advance. "Where you can see that it will, tell the patient and obtain their written agreement before the cost is incurred... What the Agreement does not permit is discovering the overage on the invoice."
The written-agreement rule matches the contract, where clause 4.6 provides that "The price charged shall fall within the displayed range save where the User agrees otherwise in writing", and requires the provider to "disclose inclusions and exclusions" and not to "add undisclosed fees after booking". The test for a breach is a pattern rather than an incident: "One case above the range, or a case the patient agreed to in writing, is not a breach of anything."
The 15 percent threshold does not permit overcharging. The Commercial Schedule defines systematic overcharging as "pricing above the displayed range in more than fifteen (15) percent of Completed Bookings in any rolling 12 months", and states that it "sets the evidential threshold for a systematic breach of that duty and does not create a separate or lesser pricing obligation". The duty itself is clause 4.6, which admits of no percentage at all; the threshold is how a pattern is proved.
The provider sets the listed price. It enters the minimum and maximum in US dollars, warrants that the pricing is accurate and current, and must update it within 30 days of any change. We do not set it, negotiate it or adjust it, and clause 9.2 of the contract bars us from advising any provider on its specific pricing, save for flagging an inconsistency with its own published prices.
Not yet. The inclusions list currently lives in the pricing documents providers receive, the Pricing Criteria of September 2026 and What Our Prices Cover of 15 August 2026. The clause that would write the list into the agreement itself is drafted and has not been applied, so the seven items are what providers are asked to cover, not yet a signed term. Clause 4.6, the duty to charge within the displayed range, is already in the contract.
A buyer can only use a listed price if the scope behind it is fixed, stated and the same for every provider. Ours is published in full, in the same words providers are given, so that a listing can be checked against it by someone who does not work here.
The price itself is the provider's own: the provider enters it, warrants it and is held to it. Our post on how a listed price is collected, committed to and reconciled sets out what happens after it is entered.
This article is general information about our published pricing definition. It is not legal, tax or financial advice; consult counsel on any plan decision.
Disclosure: Sylk Health supplies procedure-price data and earns a commission from providers on bookings completed through its platform. It would benefit from broader use of externally benchmarked prices for medical procedures, and from any gap between those prices and prices in the United States.
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