Overview

Health Care and Insurance Australia has been conducted in all odd-numbered years since 1987. This comprehensive study offers unique insights into the key health and health insurance matters and helps understand what Australians really think about public and private health care in our country. In 2019, almost 20,000 Australian health decision makers completed our study, which was conducted both via telephone and online.

Key benefits

1.      Independent research without agenda or political bias;
2.      32 years of trends giving historical context and allowing a deep understanding of current views;
3.      Robust benchmarking between jurisdictions and major industry players;
4.      The ability to re-introduce questions/key issues from previous years and analyse changing views;
5.      Comprehensive and user-friendly online reporting, with search functionality; and
6.      Economies of syndication - which means the research can be provided at a fraction of the cost of an ad-hoc study.

“The Bible” as it is known in the health sector is an indispensable tool, informing strategic direction and decision making for healthcare and insurance managers, marketers and government health managers at all levels for more than 32 years.

Research topics

Content is driven by stakeholder requests in a consultative process that precedes each survey. Approximately 25% of survey content changes each ‘wave’ and is made up of new questions, or re-introduction of past questions. Some of the key new research issues in 2019 include:

• New Government reforms including ‘Gold, Silver, Bronze and Basic’ re-classifications, youth discounts, mental health waiver, increased excess levels and rural and regional travel and accommodation;
• Whether health funds should simply provide health insurance or act as medical advisors, and manage health and care of members;
• Awareness and understanding of community rating;
• Public versus private hospital preference;
• Why elect to be treated in a public hospital when have private health insurance;
• Out of pocket costs; impact of cost in choosing a specialist, and whether would join PHI if it guaranteed no gap;
• Importance of natural therapies and other modalities in Extras;
• Impact on fund consolidation on PHI status;
• Influence of comparator recommendations;
• Support for Government legislating informed financial consent;
• Length of wait to see a medical specialist following GP referral; and
• Views towards complementary versus western medicine.

Research topics

Health Care and Insurance Australia is conducted both by telephone interviewing and online survey sampling. Approximately one third of questions are only asked via telephone, one third were asked only online, and one third are asked both via telephone and online.  We report the telephone results in this report where available, which are directly comparable with results of previous surveys since tracking commenced in 1987. Online results are also presented, which primarily includes new questions introduced since 2015.