Introduction

The AIHW Disease expenditure database takes data from Australia’s National Health Accounts, that forms the base of reporting for the AIHW Health expenditure Australia report series (latest report, AIHW 2025a) and further examines the data to understand more about the people receiving care and the diseases and conditions being managed. The Disease expenditure database contains spending estimates for 17 Australian Burden of Disease Study (ABDS) groups and the 220 conditions within those groups, by age group and sex for each of the following broad and detailed areas of spending:

  • Hospitals
    • Public hospital admitted patients
    • Public hospital emergency departments
    • Public hospital outpatients
    • Private hospital admitted patients
  • Primary health care
    • general practitioner services
    • allied health and other services
    • pharmaceutical benefits scheme
    • dental expenditure
  • Referred medical services
    • specialist services
    • pathology
    • medical imaging

Spending on health prevention (through public and community health programs as defined in the AIHW Health expenditure Australia report) is currently not included as part of the AIHW Disease Expenditure database due to the difficulty in allocating this spending to specific burden of disease conditions. Spending on the national cancer screening programs for breast, cervical and bowel cancer has been included in the cancer screening section this report.

The health spending estimates presented in this report do not include some out-of-pocket spending, such as privately provided physiotherapy or psychology services, or costs borne through the aged care system (where some management of conditions such as dementia or stroke may occur).

For further details on what is included in the AIHW Disease expenditure database compared to the AIHW Health expenditure database, refer to Table 2.2 from the accompanying methods report, Health system spending on disease and injury in Australia 2023–24: Overview of analysis and methodology (AIHW 2025b).

While health research is also not included as part of the Disease Expenditure database, there is a separate section for research in this report that reflects on National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) expenditure for disease, research and health areas presented according to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). This section also touches on the expenditure through the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF).

Spending for three additional groups (outside the 17 disease groups) have been included in this report – well care, the treatment of risk factors and examination and observation not elsewhere classified (NEC). Well care includes the following seven sub-categories of spending:

  • well person (includes expenditure for services that are typically routine examinations, general examinations without specific complaints or diagnoses, or administrative in nature)
  • routine dental (includes routine checkups and cleaning)
  • pregnancy and postpartum care
  • family planning
  • counselling services
  • social services (includes problems related to housing and economic circumstances, social environment, support groups)
  • donor

Estimates of spending on Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID–19) in the hospital setting as well as through the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS), Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and research, have been included in this report. It only includes expenditure that can be attributed by age and sex. The COVID–19 spending in this report excludes payments under the National Partnership on COVID–19 Response (NPCR) as well as any community or public health related spending on COVID–19 outside of the NPCR. For a more detailed analysis of the response to COVID–19, refer to the latest AIHW COVID spending report (AIHW 2024a).

The data in the AIHW Disease expenditure database and in this report includes all sources of funding, including patient co-payments. Spending estimates are based on hospital admissions, emergency department records, outpatient records, MBS and PBS records. For each of these data sources, patients' sex was recorded as male, female or other, not reported or unknown.

This may be based on what the patient selected, or how staff completed the record. It may also be based on an existing record for the patient, which may no longer reflect how they identify.

It is important to note that it is not known if the people completing these records interpreted sex to mean sex at birth or gender identity.

This report uses the terms 'male’ and ‘female', but it should be noted that some participants may not identify with these terms. Where sex was reported as other, not reported or unknown, the data has been included as part of the spending for ‘Total Persons’.

How do we measure disease costs?

The cost of disease is not just financial. Being unwell or suffering from a health condition has other effects on quality of life, affecting people’s ability to work or do the activities they enjoy. The spending estimates in this report do not include direct costs from outside of the health care sector or estimates of the indirect costs due to illness.

How much is spent on treating, managing, or preventing conditions in financial terms can be influenced by a range of factors such as the cost and availability of effective treatments, and disease prevalence. As such, the disease expenditure estimates in this report do not necessarily reflect the incidence or prevalence of those conditions, or the full ‘burden’, or human cost. Refer to the Comparison of disease expenditure and disease burden section in this report and AIHW 2024b for further information.

It is not feasible (or appropriate) to allocate some forms of health spending to specific diseases. For example, administration expenditure and capital expenditure are generally unable to be attributed to any particular condition. In addition, most community and public health programs, which support the treatment and prevention of many conditions, do not have sufficient data to allocate to conditions. Therefore, the disease expenditure estimates in this publication are not directly comparable with estimates published in the AIHW’s Health expenditure Australia reports (which cover all health spending) (AIHW 2025a). Refer to Figure 1 in this report and Table 2.2 in the accompanying methods paper (AIHW 2025b), available from the Related material section, for more detailed information on the inclusions and exclusions and for further details on the estimation methods, scope of data included, and comparability to previous studies.

Health spending in Australia is generally managed through particular funding programs such as the National Health Reform Agreement (NHRA), MBS or PBS. Often the relationship under these schemes between the spending, the particular diseases or conditions being managed, and the demographic characteristics of the people whose care the spending is for, is complex. It can be difficult, for example, to precisely identify for a hospital stay involving someone suffering from a number of ailments and including a range of procedures and treatments, which expenses were related to which conditions. Health spending is also often associated with the management of symptoms and issues for which there is no specific diagnosis (for example, someone attending to an Emergency Department (ED) with abdominal pain for which no specific cause can be identified).

The aim of this report is to use a range of modelling techniques to apportion health spending to population groups based on age, sex, and to disease expenditure groups using the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) and the AIHW’s Australian Burden of Disease Study (ABDS) conditions as far as is possible. Due to data availability, allocated spending is skewed towards activity in hospitals, and estimates should be interpreted with this in mind.

This disease expenditure study largely draws upon previously published methods, the most recent being Health system spending on disease and injury in Australia 2022–23: Overview of analysis and methodology report (AIHW 2024c). There were however changes made to the methods used for estimating the cost of services in public hospitals, allocating costs to specific conditions within disease groups, and the list of conditions that are included in the study. Data in this report should be used and are not directly comparable to data in earlier reports (AIHW 2019a, AIHW 2021, AIHW 2022, AIHW 2023, 2024c). This report also includes comparisons with historical data (using these updated methods) so there is a consistent time series for 2013–14 to 2023–24. Refer to the Technical notes and the accompanying methods report (AIHW 2025b). The methods report is available from the Related material section.

What is new in the 2023–24 disease expenditure study?

Inclusion of expenditure by remoteness

There is a new section in this report on remoteness that contains three interactive data visualisations. The first two visualisations show spending for 2023–24, for different disease groups, by sex, state and areas of remoteness. The third visualisation shows how expenditure for different burden of disease conditions, compares by area of remoteness across broad areas of expenditure such as hospitals, primary health care and referred medical services. The results for all three visualisations are presented as total spending and spending per 100,000 population.

Inclusion of expenditure on a per person basis

Throughout this report, expenditure estimates are presented per 100,000 population. Dividing total spending by a common unit, such as 100,000 people, removes the influence of population size. Age is a significant factor in healthcare spending, as older populations tend to have higher healthcare demands and costs. Presenting spending per 100,000 population helps to adjust for these differences in age distribution, providing a more accurate picture of per-person health expenses.

Inclusion of dental services expenditure by age group and sex

For the first time dental expenditure within the disease expenditure database has been split by age group and sex. This was done using fees charged for private health insurance general treatments. While there are limitations with this method, the high share of spending for dental services within the private health insurance general treatment group was the reason these age and sex proportions were used as a proxy for distributing expenditure for dental by age group and sex.

Inclusion of expenditure on cancer screening programs

This report covers the three national population-based cancer screening programs which were in place during 2023–24, noting that the National Lung Cancer Screening Program was implemented in July 2025.

This report looks at expenditure for the following:

  • BreastScreen Australia
  • National Cervical Screening Program
  • National Bowel Cancer Screening Program

For estimates of how much was spent through the health system in 2023–24 for each case of a disease or condition that was known to be prevalent in the community in that year and spending attributable to potentially avoidable risk factors such as being overweight, physical inactivity and tobacco use in that year, refer Health system spending per case of disease and for certain risk factors (AIHW 2025c).

This report does not cover health system spending on disease and injury in Australia for First Nations people. In future it may be possible to expand the content of this report to include this. The AIHW Health Economics Unit currently provides expenditure data for measure 3.21 from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework. For the latest available information refer to 3.21 Expenditure on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health compared to need.

 

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