The last year of life: patterns in health service use and expenditure

Acknowledgements

This report was authored by Anne-Marie Waters and Paul Lukong from the Burden of Disease and Mortality Unit, and Karen Hobson from the Authoring Support Team of the AIHW, under the guidance of Michelle Gourley and Melanie Dunford. Special thanks are extended to other members of the Burden of Disease and Mortality Unit, including Stephen Skilton who, together with Paul Lukong, extracted and analysed the NIHSI AA data. Thanks also to Ruihua Guo, Wendy Ho and Vergil Dolar who prepared the data visualisations, and to Paula Laws and Yolanda Lovie-Toon who assisted in finalising the report.

The authors acknowledge Richard Juckes, Head of AIHW’s Health Group, and Matthew James, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the AIHW, for reviewing and making valuable additions to the report.

Subject-matter expert review of sections was also provided by the Aged Care Data Improvement Unit, Health Economics Unit, other relevant data custodians, and the Specialist Capabilities Unit.

The authors thank Professor Tony Blakely, University of Melbourne, and Professor Annette Dobson, University of Queensland, who peer reviewed the related Australia’s Health 2022 Data Insights article Health service costs in the last year of life. The valuable additions they made have been incorporated into this report.