Refugees and humanitarian entrants have different health outcomes and health service use compared with other permanent migrants and with the rest of the Australian population. Understanding their service use can inform and improve policies and services for these diverse populations. This report presents data on service use by humanitarian entrants who arrived in Australia from 2000 to 2020.

Key findings

• Humanitarian entrants were hospitalised with COVID-19 over 5 times more than other permanent migrants.
• Humanitarian entrants were almost twice as likely to be hospitalised or attend an emergency department as other permanent migrants.
• In 2020–21, 9.2% of humanitarian entrants were aged over 60 (compared with 22% of the general Australian population).
• A higher proportion of the humanitarian population were specialist homelessness services clients (13%) than other permanent migrants (2.0%).