Oral health and dental care in Australia

Child Dental Benefits Schedule

The Child Dental Benefits Schedule (CDBS) commenced on 1 January 2014 and provides access to benefits for basic dental services to around 3.3 million eligible children (Department of Health, Disability and Ageing 2024a). Basic dental services include examinations, x-rays, cleaning, fissure sealing, fillings, root canals and extractions. A number of services can be provided during a visit. A child is eligible if they are aged between 0–17 years at any point in the calendar year, eligible for Medicare, and receive an eligible Australian Government payment. Eligible children have access to a benefit cap of $1,095 over a two calendar year period (Department of Health, Disability and Ageing 2024b). The payment of benefits under the CDBS is administered through Services Australia.

The proportion of children aged 0–17 years eligible to receive services under the CDBS ranged from 58% in Tasmania to 29% in the Australian Capital Territory.  

Utilisation of the CDBS by eligible children differs across the jurisdictions, with those in the Northern Territory, Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory demonstrating lower utilisation rates than the national average.

Explore the Child Dental Benefits Schedule data in the interactive below.

In 2024:

• the average benefits paid per service ranged from $43 for a diagnostic service to $154 for a restorative service
• More preventive (around 2.5 million) and diagnostic services (around 2.1 million) were provided than restorative services (around 482,000)
• the number of diagnostic examination services ranged from 3,210 per 100,000 population in the Northern Territory to 10,825 per 100,000 population in South Australia. The average across all states and territories was 7,688 per 100,000 population.

Explore the Child Dental Benefits Schedule data in the Dental care interactives below.

Public Dental Waiting Times

The AIHW compiles, on an annual basis, data on waiting times for adults who were placed on selected public dental waiting lists to enable monitoring of those waiting times. These data requirements are defined in the Public Dental Waiting Times (PDWT) National Minimum Data Set (NMDS) specification.

In 2018, the AIHW reported data at a state and territory level for the first 4 years (2013–14 to 2016–17) of the data collection (AIHW 2018). However, due to concerns about the comparability of the data and availability of data for some jurisdictions, the report presents the data for each jurisdiction separately, with no national data tables or comparisons between jurisdictions.

The report also examines the factors underlying the lack of comparability and availability of data – which is primarily related to the different organisation and administration of public dental waiting lists across jurisdictions.

Data from this report, and additional data for 2017–18 through to 2023–24, are presented in Dental care interactive 20 below. The data show that some people wait a considerable time before receiving care (or an offer of care).

Explore the data using the Dental care interactive 20 below.