Spending on healthcare has grown over the past few decades and is expected to continue to rise. Are we getting value for money? Could we be doing better?

This paper estimates productivity growth for one third of Australia’s healthcare sector and benchmarks our level of productivity against that of other countries’ healthcare sectors.

The results are positive — healthcare productivity grew at a healthy 3% per year between 2011-12 and 2017-18 and Australia’s healthcare sector was amongst the most productive in the world between 2010 and 2019.