Expenditure on palliative care
This chapter provides information related to expenditure on palliative care, sourced from the National Hospital Cost Data Collection (NHCDC), Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS), and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and Repatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (RPBS).
Note that the expenditure reported in this chapter does not include all palliative care expenditure due to data availability. Further information about how expenditure on palliative care is identified through these available data sets is provided in Data sources.
The information in this chapter was last updated in May 2026.
Key points
Hospital expenditure:
- In 2023–24, 313 of 772 public hospitals reported admitted patient palliative care data to the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority (IHACPA), with a total hospital cost of $666.7 million on admitted palliative care. This represents 16% of all subacute care costs.
- In 2023–24, 229 public hospitals reported non-admitted patient palliative care data to the IHACPA, with a total hospital cost of $218.9 million on non-admitted palliative care.
Medicare-subsidised services and prescription medicines:
- In 2024–25, the benefits paid for Medicare-subsidised palliative medicine attendance and case conference services provided by palliative medicine physicians/specialists was $6.8 million, at an average of $430 per patient.
- In 2024–25, the Australian Government spent $40.4 million on palliative care-related medications from the Palliative Care Schedule, at an average of $83 per patient.
- In 2024–25, pain relief prescriptions accounted for 86% ($34.5 million) of the expenditure on palliative care-related medications, followed by prescriptions for gastrointestinal symptoms and neurological symptoms (8.8% and 3.9% respectively).
Trends:
- There was an increase of 16% in the benefits paid for palliative care attendance and case conference services between 2023–24 and 2024–25 (from $5.9 million to $6.8 million), after having declined by an average annual rate of 7.0% in the previous 5 years (from $8.5 million in 2018–19, in real terms).
- Between 2016–17 and 2024–25, expenditure on palliative care-related medications grew by an average annual rate of 11%, driven largely by a sharp 44% increase between 2020–21 and 2021–22 (to $39.3 million, in real terms) following the introduction of new medications. Since then, growth has continued at a slower annual rate of 0.9% to $40.4 million (in real terms) in 2024–25.