SIRA’s latest dashboard shows the impacts of COVID-19 on healthcare

10 August 2022

SIRA has published its healthcare costs and outcomes review for the 12 months to September 2021, which shows that growth of healthcare costs is slowing in the workers compensation and motor accidents schemes.

The review provides a transparent account of healthcare use, costs and performance trends and helps SIRA better understand the drivers of rising healthcare costs.

The 12 months to September 2021 have continued to demonstrate the upward trend in healthcare costs across both schemes, with combined costs now totalling over $1.15 billion.

Costs in workers compensation were 4.39% higher than the previous year and costs in the motor accidents scheme grew by 10.38%.

The slower rates of growth coincided with the COVID-19 waves where there was reduced hospital and surgical use during the lockdown periods.

In workers compensation, most other healthcare services continued to trend upwards with notable growth in physiotherapy, exercise physiology and psychology services which contributed to the overall growth of 8.4% in the allied health service group.

In the motor accidents scheme the growth was driven by an increase in the number of claims, increases in the number of healthcare service types per claim, and the number of services per service type.  As the 2017 CTP scheme continues to mature, it remains challenging to draw conclusions on healthcare trends.

The review supports SIRA’s commitment to implementing value-based healthcare within the workers compensation and motor accidents schemes to ensure that every healthcare dollar spent delivers quality outcomes.

More findings on healthcare costs and outcomes in the workers compensation and CTP schemes are available in the dashboard report.