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In 2020–21, $1.9 billion (1.2% of total allocated health expenditure) was attributed to chronic kidney disease.
How much is spent on chronic kidney disease?
In 2020–21, an estimated 1.2% of total allocated expenditure in the Australian health system ($1.9 billion) was attributed to chronic kidney disease (AIHW 2023).
The average health system spending per case of CKD in 2018–19 was $2,326 (males $3,012, females $1,727) (AIHW 2022).
What is expenditure on chronic kidney disease?
This web page provides recent data on health care expenditure on chronic kidney disease (CKD), with details by type of condition, health care service, age group, and sex.
It includes expenditure by the Australian Government; state, territory, and local governments; and the non-government sector (including private health insurance and individual contributions).
These estimates report direct, allocated and recurrent expenditure only. They do not account for the total amount spent on kidney health.
Note: Estimates are not directly comparable to previous disease expenditure estimates due to changes to data and methods. Further information on how the estimates were derived is available from the Disease expenditure in Australia web report.
Where is the money spent?
In 2020–21, most allocated CKD expenditure (89% or $1.7 billion) was spent on hospital services. This included expenditure on public hospital admitted patients ($1.2 billion), private hospital services ($261.6 million), public hospital outpatients ($158.1 million) and public hospital emergency departments ($7.8 million).
Another 4% ($76.6 million) related to non-hospital medical services (primary care and referred medical services), comprising general practitioner services ($36.0 million), specialist services ($21.7 million), medical imaging ($3.2 million), pathology ($15.1 million) and allied health and other services ($0.6 million).
A small amount of CKD expenditure (0.4% or $7.6 million) was for dental services.
The remaining 6.3% ($116.2 million) was spent on prescription pharmaceuticals subsidised under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) (Figure 1).
