Diabetes expenditure in Australia 2008-09

SummaryThis report presents information on expenditure for diabetes in Australia in 2008-09, as well as information on how this expenditure has changed in the last decade and how it is expected to grow in the future. Expenditure is presented by sex, age and diabetes type for 2000-01 to 2008-09. The report also looks at how per service expenditure differs from per capita expenditure across age groups and by diabetes type. The report is based primarily on recurrent diabetes expenditure for the health-care sectors hospital admitted patient services, out-of-hospital medical expenses, and blood glucose lowering medications. There is also a section on additional expenditure that mainly reports on funding of government programs to help manage diabetes in the community and funding for research into the disease. It should be noted that not all health-care expenditure can be allocated to a specific disease because expenditure in areas such as capital works or administration is common to all diseases. For this reason, the estimates in the report are based on about 70% of total health- care expenditure. There are other limitations to the data and these are explained in the Methods section of the report.Main findings In 2008-09, estimated expenditure for diabetes, allocated by health-care sector, totaled $1,507 million-2.3% of all allocated health-care expenditure in Australia. An additional $153 million was spent on government programs and subsidies, research and gestational diabetes programs.Diabetes expenditure increased by 86% between 2000-01 and 2008-09 while expenditure for all diseases increased by 60% in the same period.Type 2 diabetes accounted for at least 60% of diabetes expenditure in 2008-09.In 2008-09, diabetes expenditure for hospital admitted patient services was conservatively estimated at $647 million, for out-of-hospital medical expenses it was $362 million and for blood glucose lowering medications it was $498 million.After adjusting for inflation, the biggest increase in diabetes health-care expenditure from 2000-01 to 2008-09 was for hospital admitted patient services-expenditure more than doubled, from $300 million to $647 million