Spending on disease by area of spending
There are three broad areas of health spending included in the disease expenditure analysis: hospitals, primary health care and referred medical services. Total estimated spending in 2022–23 was $172.3 billion and can be disaggregated as follows:
- hospital services $110.4 billion (public and private admitted patient services, public hospital emergency departments, and public hospital outpatient clinics)
- primary health care services $46.7 billion (general practitioner services, allied health services, benefit paid pharmaceuticals and dental expenditure)
- referred medical services $15.2 billion (specialist services, medical imaging, and pathology).
Public health and community health have not been included as part of primary health care services in the Disease Expenditure database due to the difficulty in allocating spending to specific burden of disease conditions within the disease groups. Research is also excluded from the database, however there is a separate research section in this report that reflects on the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) expenditure for disease, research and health areas presented according to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).
Figure 1 below shows how total health spending for 2022–23 as reported in Health expenditure Australia 2022–23 (AIHW 2024a) relates to disease expenditure reporting for 2022–23.
Figure 1: Areas of health spending included in the disease expenditure study 2022–23
There are some key differences between recurrent health spending in the Health Expenditure database, and the Disease Expenditure database. In the Disease Expenditure database:
- Public hospitals spending is further reported as emergency department, admitted patient, and outpatient clinic spending.
- Highly specialised PBS drugs dispensed in hospitals are reported as PBS spending, which is a component of primary health care, while the health expenditure database reports this as hospital spending.
The visualisation below (Figure 2) shows spending for the broad areas of expenditure in the Disease Expenditure database for 2022–23 compared to recurrent health spending for 2022–23 reported in Health Expenditure database. Data used to create the visualisation is available to download from the data tables. For further information on methods used to derive the expenditure reported, please refer to the Technical notes in this web report and to Health system spending on disease and injury in Australia, 2022-23: Overview of analysis and methodology which is available from the Related material section.
Figure 2: Disease expenditure and recurrent health expenditure by broad area of expenditure, 2022–23
This bar chart compares 2022-23 Health Expenditure and Disease Expenditure data. It shows that disease expenditure is higher than health expenditure in hospitals, while health expenditure exceeds disease expenditure in primary health care, referred medical services, other services, and research.
This stacked bar chart shows disease expenditure by broad area of expenditure highlighting $110.4 billion spent on disease groups in hospitals, $46.7 billion in primary health care, and $15.2 billion in referred medical services. Each bar represents a different broad area of spending, with the total disease expenditure distributed across these three broad categories.
The bar chart shows total disease spending by sex and age group across broad and detailed areas of expenditure.
