The definition of what a price covers is only worth as much as the machinery behind it: who enters the figure, what they warrant, how it is kept current, and what happens when an invoice exceeds the range.
Information provided is for general reference only and does not constitute medical advice. Consult a qualified healthcare professional before making medical decisions.
Listed prices on our platform are entered and warranted by the provider, updated within 30 days of any change, and reconciled using only a booking code and an amount. Commission is 10 percent of the first USD 50,000 of an episode; bills above range in more than 15 percent of bookings are a breach.
Sylk Health. Current as of October 2026.
A published definition of scope tells a buyer what a price is meant to include. It does not tell them whether anyone is held to it. That is a separate question, and it is the one a buyer should ask second. What follows is the mechanism, quoted from the contract providers sign and the criteria they are given.
The provider enters the price, and nobody at Sylk Health types one, because the contract puts the duty on the provider: it "is responsible for entering and maintaining its Provider Data (including mapping its procedures to Sylk Health's catalogue and keeping its prices current) through the facilities Sylk Health makes available". We may enter data on a provider's behalf only "on the Provider's written request" and using data the provider supplies, and any display error we introduce that way falls on us.
The data specification marks each field Required, Conditional or Optional. Three of the price fields are Required, which means the provider "shall supply and maintain it as a condition of listing":
A room rate, an expected length of stay and the room-rate inclusions are Optional. Inclusions and exclusions are not a courtesy; a listing without them is not a compliant listing. Our post on what a price on our platform has to cover sets out the definition they are written against.
Two warranties do the work, one general and one specific. On the data generally: "The Provider warrants all Provider Data is accurate, current, complete in all material respects, and not misleading." On the price specifically: "The Provider warrants its pricing is accurate, current, complete and not misleading, genuinely reflects what it charges, and complies with applicable consumer-protection and healthcare-pricing law."
The phrase that carries the most weight there is "genuinely reflects what it charges". A price that is accurate as a number but is not what the hospital actually invoices does not satisfy it.
The update duty is a period, not an aspiration. The provider must keep pricing current, "updating it within 30 days of any change and correcting without undue delay any listed price it knows or ought reasonably to know has become materially inaccurate".
Our side of the same obligation is a dating duty. "Sylk Health shall date-stamp Provider Data carried in any Data Product with the date the Provider last submitted or verified it, and shall not present materially stale pricing as current." A licensed figure therefore travels with the date it was last confirmed, which is how a buyer can tell a fresh price from an old one without asking us.
Public price systems carry the same two duties. England's competition order (opens in new tab) requires private consultants to supply their fees and "keep such information up to date." Singapore's published knee replacement bills (opens in new tab) state their period on the page: "Based on transacted bills from 1 January 2023 to 31 December 2023."
A price supplier with an opinion about what the price should be is a different business, and the contract forecloses it. Under clause 9.2 we may not:
The last exception is narrow on purpose. Telling a hospital its listed price and its invoice disagree is data accuracy. Telling it what to charge is not, and we cannot do it.
Where coverage is thin, the count is shown rather than hidden. "Where a Data Product reports a country or corridor figure derived from a small number of providers, Sylk Health shall indicate the number of contributing providers." The federal transparency rule asks something similar of American hospitals: from 1 January 2026, where a charge is based on a percentage or an algorithm, the percentile figures must carry "the total number of allowed amount remittances" behind them, under 45 C.F.R. § 180.50 (opens in new tab).
A separate and higher floor governs a different use. Aggregated data may be used to train a model "only where the data has been aggregated so that no record identifies more than the country of the Provider, and only where each country in the training set draws on no fewer than five (5) contributing Providers". The two should not be conflated: one is a disclosure duty attached to a published figure, the other is a minimum cohort before a model may see the data at all.
Commission is 10 percent of what the provider invoices for the episode, charged "only on the first USD 50,000 of the Commission Basis", so at that rate it "does not exceed USD 5,000 per Episode". Reconciliation is how the figure is checked, and the striking feature of it is how little information moves.
For each invoiced part the provider reports "only (a) Sylk Health's booking reference code and (b) the part of the Commission Basis attributable to that part (a monetary amount)". The report "shall not include the User's name or identity, any clinical, diagnostic, outcome or treatment information, or any payment-account, receipt or settlement detail". No money moves through us at all: "Sylk Health does not process, hold or transmit any payment between the Provider and any User."
The table below collects every figure in the mechanism, with the clause that sets it.
Rule | Figure | Where it is set |
|---|---|---|
Update after a price change | Within 30 days | Clause 4.6 |
Commission rate | 10% of the Commission Basis | Schedule B, section 2.1 |
Commission cap per episode | First USD 50,000 only, so at most USD 5,000 | Schedule B, section 2.2 |
Systematic overcharging | Above range in more than 15% of Completed Bookings in a rolling 12 months | Schedule B, section 5.8 |
Notice before recovering a shortfall | 15 Business Days to explain or correct | Schedule B, section 5.8 |
Verification requests | No more than 2 in a rolling 12 months, unless pricing is believed materially inaccurate | Schedule B, section 5.8 |
Audit costs | Provider pays only if under-reporting exceeds 5% of the verified Commission Basis | Schedule B, section 5.9 |
Minimum cohort for model training | 5 contributing providers per country | Clause 3.8 |
Every figure in the table is a limit on one party or the other. Several of them, the notice period and the cap on verification requests among them, limit us.
The duty itself admits of no percentage, because the price charged "shall fall within the displayed range save where the User agrees otherwise in writing". A single case above the maximum, agreed in advance and in writing, breaches nothing.
What the Commercial Schedule adds is an evidential threshold for proving a pattern. The same section anticipates being misread and answers it in its opening sentence, saying that it "sets the evidential threshold for a systematic breach of that duty and does not create a separate or lesser pricing obligation". Fifteen percent is how a pattern is shown, not an allowance.
Sylk Health receives neither. Clause 4.3 limits each provider report to a booking reference code and a monetary amount, and excludes "the User's name or identity, any clinical, diagnostic, outcome or treatment information". Clause 4.1 states that "Sylk Health does not process, hold or transmit any payment between the Provider and any User," and clause 8.1 bars the provider from transmitting clinical records to us at all.
The prices still bind for bookings already made. The Pricing Criteria tell providers: "If the listing ends, or is removed after you lose an Approved Accreditation, you honour the prices you listed for every booking initiated before that event." A patient who booked against a listed price on day 1 is therefore protected even if the listing disappears on day 2.
It depends on what the audit finds. Under section 5.9 of the Commercial Schedule, where under-reporting "for the period examined" exceeds 5 percent of the verified Commission Basis, the provider pays the shortfall and our reasonable audit costs. "Below that threshold, each Party bears its own audit costs and the Provider pays only the shortfall."
The machinery does not make listed prices true. It makes them attributable, dated and enforceable against the party that wrote them, which is a narrower claim and the only one available to us. We do not set the figure, we are barred from advising on it, and we reconcile it against what the provider invoices rather than against what we think it should be.
A buyer who wants to know whether a listed price is reasonable should compare it with something. A buyer who wants to know whether it is real should ask who is held to it, and this is the answer.
This article is general information about our contract terms. 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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