Australia’s response to dementia requires economic investment across the health, aged care and welfare sectors. This investment includes expenditure associated with: diagnosis, treatment and care of people with dementia (including supporting a workforce of trained professionals); and support services for people with dementia and their informal carers.
The following pages present direct expenditure estimates for caring for people with dementia across the health and aged care sectors in 2018–19. It includes the estimated expenditure on:
Refer to the Expenditure data tables for the underlying data presented in these pages.
The year 2018–19 is presented as this is the latest year of data available from the AIHW Disease Expenditure Database. In this report we focus on presenting health and aged care expenditure estimates that are directly attributable to dementia (rather than all costs for people with dementia), to avoid including expenditure related to other conditions. Our estimates have been adjusted to reflect the contribution of comorbidities to the costs for treatment and care of people with dementia and do not include estimates of indirect expenditure such as costs arising from the social and economic burden on carers and family, or from lost wages and productivity. More information on the methodology and data sources used to estimate expenditure directly attributable to dementia can be found by expanding the box Information sources and coverage of dementia expenditure estimates.