Dental Extracts from "Health Expenditure in Australia in 2003-04"

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has just released their major annual publication on Health Expenditure in Australia 2003-04, which has received press coverage for its key message that Australia is now spending $1 in every $10 of the nation’s income on health services.

Selected extracts from this major research publication related to dental services are highlighted below. If you are interested in more dental information, do a keyword search for ‘dental’ inside the PDF after opening the file.

“Total expenditure on health goods and services, health-related services and capital formation in Australia in 2003–04 was estimated at $78.4 billion (Table 1). This was an increase of $6.1 billion over the previous year. Most of this increase between 2002–03 and 2003–04 was in six areas of expenditure (Tables A3 and A4):
· hospitals—up $1.9 billion
· medical services—up $1.0 billion
· pharmaceuticals—up $0.9 billion
· other professional services— up $0.6 billion
· high-level residential care—up $0.4 billion
· dental services—up $0.3 billion.”
Source: AIHW, Health expenditure in Australia in 2003-04, 2005:6

“In 2003–04, of the estimated $16.2 billion out–of-pocket recurrent expenditure by individuals on health care goods and services (Figure 11):
• 31.4% was spent on pharmaceuticals
– 6.4% on PBS and Repatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (RPBS) patient contributions
– 25.0% on other pharmaceuticals (see Glossary for a detailed definition)
• 20.1% on dental services
• 13.5% on aids and appliances
• 9.9% on medical services.”
Source: AIHW, Health expenditure in Australia in 2003-04, 2005:35

“Funding by private health insurance funds is chiefly directed at private hospital services. During 2003–04, private hospitals accounted for 48.6% of the $5.6 billion in funding provided by health insurance funds (Figure 13). Other major areas of expenditure that received funding were dental services (12.6%), administration (10.4%) and medical services (9.7%).”
Source: AIHW, Health expenditure in Australia in 2003-04, 2005:40

“Individuals contributed 68.1% of the total expenditure of $4.4 billion for dental services in 2002–03 (Table A3). For the period 1993–94 to 2002–03, real growth in expenditure on dental services was 4.0%, some 0.2 percentage points below that of real growth in total health expenditure (Table A5). For the period 1997–98 to 2002–03, however, real growth for dental services (5.7%) exceeded that for total health expenditure by 0.7 percentage points.”

Source: AIHW, Health expenditure in Australia in 2003-04, 2005:59