Report on health expenditure for Indigenous Australians in remote areas

About 2% of health expenditure on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in remote areas goes to dental services, according to a report released today. With community health services accounting for 22% of expenditure, dental services is ranked 7th.

The report, Expenditure on health for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people 2008-09: an analysis by remoteness and disease, looks at selected categories of health spending—patients admitted to public and private hospitals, Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations, the Medicare Benefits Schedule and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

In the category of potentially preventable hospitalisations, dental conditions was ranked third with 5.4 per 1000 people needing to be admitted to hospitals. The highest rate of hospitalisation was for diabetes complications - 8.5.

In remote and very remote areas, health spending on selected health services per person is about $2.41 for Indigenous Australians for every $1.00 spent on non-Indigenous Australians, according to a report released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. This is considerably higher than the $1.39 to $1.00 Indigenous to non-Indigenous health expenditure per-person ratio for health services in Australia.