Health expenditure Australia 2013–14: analysis by sector

This report extends the analysis presented in Health expenditure Australia 2013–14 to further explore expenditure on particular categories of health goods and services. In 2013–14, $58.8 billion was spent on hospitals in Australia, $54.7 billion on primary health care and $32.0 billion on other health goods and services. A further $9.1 billion was spent on capital expenditure. Unreferred medical services attracted the highest share of primary health care funding in 2013–14, at 19.3%. This is different to earlier in the decade, when benefit-paid pharmaceuticals attracted the most spending from 2008–09 to 2011–12. Growth in expenditure on benefit-paid pharmaceuticals slowed in the last 3 years compared with the rest of the decade. This slower growth in expenditure was in contrast to a steady increase in the number of prescriptions dispensed over the same period.