Covid-19 and Population Growth in Australia: insights from data on oral glucose tolerance tests
Data: Medicare Statistics - MBS Item: 66548
You can access data on Medicare service items and groups here: Link
Key things to consider according to Medicare are:
- State/Territory is determined according to the address (at the time of claiming) of the patient to whom the service was rendered.
- Month is determined by the date the service was processed by Services Australia, not the date the service was provided.
- Monthly figures may vary due to the varying number of processing days in a month, which depends on the number of days in the month, public holidays, overtime worked etc.
I have used data on Service Item 66548 which is: Oral glucose tolerance test in pregnancy for the diagnosis of gestational diabetes and you can see the item on Medicare website here: Link
The Trends
There have been lots of conversation on whether the pandemic and its social and economic consequences will lead to faster or slower growth in population. I have been looking into a wide range of measures to identify potential lead indicators of population growth over the last nine months.
A Caveat
I understand that there may not be a complete correlation between the number of tests done and the number of births. Not every test means a child will be born and on the other hand a pregnant woman may have more than one test. This article attempts to use the data available to help understand about a phenomenon that otherwise is hard to quantify.
Back to the Trends
Here, I compare the 2020 pregnancy test numbers with 2019 numbers. So, for example, if you see the bar sitting on -5% here, it means that the number of tests, for that location declined by 5% compared to 2019.
