🩺Specialist Visit Cost

How the Raw Value Is Calculated

The raw value is the typical self-payer cost in USD for a scheduled outpatient first visit with a medical specialist. Lower is better.

The value includes the consultation itself, mandatory practice or administrative fees and usual patient co-payments paid at the visit. It excludes laboratory tests, imaging, medicines, procedures, emergency care, hospital stays, follow-up visits and insurance premiums.

Public fee schedules, official co-payment rules, national tariffs and published public or private clinic price lists are preferred. Where those are missing, Nomadino uses maintained estimates based on health expenditure, price levels, exchange rates, health-system profiles and plausible comparator countries.

Countries with strong public systems are not set to zero merely because insured residents may pay little at the point of care. This indicator measures direct specialist-visit affordability; health insurance for foreigners, care quality, waiting times and doctor density remain separate indicators.

The score is calculated with an inverse logarithmic formula. The soft comparison range is 5 to 350 USD: very cheap visits receive high scores, very expensive visits receive low scores, while extreme outliers do not dominate the full ranking.

The value is a signal for the direct financial barrier to starting specialist care. It does not replace ratings of diagnostic quality, availability, language access, insurance benefits or medical outcomes.