A new report shows rising out-of-pocket health costs are causing people to take risks with their health.

The Cancer Council study says out-of-pocket healthcare costs are growing faster than the rate of inflation.

The researchers say that when patients do not know the full cost of a procedure, or whether other similar or cheaper options exist, they may be suffering unnecessarily.

They are calling for new standards on the disclosure of the cost of treatment so that they include the full treatment pathway and available alternatives, to help patients make better informed decisions.

Out-of-pocket expenses accounted for 57 per cent of non-government health expenditure in 2011-12, and over 17 per cent of all health care expenditure.

“The net burden of costs are reported by clinicians to influence some decisions that patients make, with the potential for detrimental health outcomes for individuals and for Australia’s health as a whole,” write the authors, Professor Sanchia Aranda from Cancer Council Australia and Professor David Currow from the Cancer Institute NSW.

They say knowing the full costs of a procedure, or if there are alternative options, “may be as important to the patient as the side effects or risks of an intervention”.

Patients are sometimes not informed about comparative waiting times in the public and private systems, particularly important as public surgical waiting times for cancers are very short.

“Publicly available data on waiting times and service quality are critical for supporting informed treatment decisions, especially when out-of-pocket expenses can vary from zero to tens of thousands of dollars for the same procedure,” the authors wrote.

Failure by medical practitioners to inform patients of all these financial costs could prevent many patients from avoiding additional suffering.

“A new standard for financial disclosure is required — a standard that moves beyond disclosure of the costs of a single procedure to one that accounts for the costs of a full pathway of treatment and all the alternatives open to the patient,” the authors concluded.

The study has been published in the Medical Journal of Australia.