Health system spending on disease and injury in Australia, 2020-21

The Burden of Disease conditions list contains over 200 conditions in 17 groups. Refer to Table 7 in the data tables for a mapping of all the ABDS conditions to the 17 disease groups. This is not an exhaustive list of all possible health conditions and, as such, the spending associated with ‘other’ conditions within a group is relatively large. For example, spending on Other maternal conditions includes costs related to healthy childbirth, which is not a health condition in the Burden of Disease list. Injury spending can be viewed in 2 ways, by the nature of injury (such as fractures) and the cause of injury (such as road traffic crashes). 

• The spending associated with ‘other’ conditions within a disease group was the highest for Other cardiovascular diseases, Other musculoskeletal, and Other blood and metabolic disorders (excludes ‘not elsewhere classified’ groupings).
• The specific conditions with the highest spending were Dental caries, Falls and Osteoarthritis (excludes all ‘other’ conditions within groups).
• Of the estimated $150 billion of health spending included in this study, $2.6 billion could be allocated by age group and sex to the treatment and management of COVID–19 within the hospital, primary health care (GP services) and referred medical services (specialist and pathology) setting.

The following interactive data visualisation (Figure 8) can be used to display spending on conditions within disease groups for each area of expenditure. Data used to create the visualisation is available to download from the data tables.

Figure 8: Expenditure on Burden of Disease conditions by area of expenditure, 2020–21

Spending on conditions varies by sex

• For females, spending was highest on Other maternal conditions, Other cardiovascular diseases, and Other musculoskeletal conditions. For specific conditions, the highest were Falls, Osteoarthritis, and Back pain and problems.
• For males, spending was highest on Other cardiovascular diseases, Other musculoskeletal conditions, and Other blood and metabolic disorders. For specific conditions, the highest were injuries caused by Falls, Osteoarthritis and Coronary heart disease.

In this report dental expenditure is not currently reported by age and sex therefore ranking of conditions for sexes excludes dental expenditure.

The following interactive data visualisation (Figure 9) can be used to display spending on conditions within a disease group by age group and sex. Data used to create the visualisation is available to download from the data tables.

Figure 9: Expenditure on Burden of Disease or Injury group by sex and age group, 2020–21