Health Minister defends procedure cost decision

The Health Minister has defended the fact he can't produce individual costs for medical procedures saying critics need to see the 'bigger picture'.

Last week, it was revealed that the Department of Health doesn't have any figures for how much things like operations cost.

It's information that is provided in the UK, but the department says this is because hospitals there have to compete for healthcare business.

Work is currently being undertaken to see how much it would cost to update the hospital's computer system to start collecting this data.

David Anderson says whilst it would be a nice thing to have, it isn't the main priority: