Covid-19 and Population Growth: Insights from pregnancy tests

Data: Medicare Statistics - MBS Item: 73806

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 73806 which is: Pregnancy test by 1 or more immunochemical methods and you can see the item on Medicare website here: Link

I understand that there will not be a complete correlation between the number of pregnancy tests done and the number of births. Not every pregnancy 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 a phenomenon that otherwise is hard to quantify.

February 2021

Overall, except for NT, the number of pregnancy tests are trending lower than historical trends across Australia.