Hips and knees lead the pack for health insurance payouts

The not-for-profit has revealed they paid $47.9 million for knee replacements (1,800 procedures) and $45 million for hip replacements (1,900 procedures) in the 12-month period until June 30, 2020. These procedures represented 10% of the organisations $972 million of total claims.

This announcement reinforces earlier statistics from nib, which featured in the October 2020 issue of Asset magazine, around the costs related to hip and knee procedures. For the 2019 calendar year, nib paid out $37.6 million on orthopaedics (primarily hip and knee replacements), representing 21% of all claims.

When the Southern Cross claims were analysed by gender, women made 1,017 claims for single hip replacements; with men making 888 claims for the same procedure. This procedure topped the claims list for men and women.

Knee replacements came second and third respectively for women and men, with colonoscopies taking up the remaining spaces in the top three (close to 20,000 procedures or $43 million claims.)