Medication Therapy In Ambulatory Medical Care

Advance Data 290.  An estimated 1.1 billion medications were provided or prescribed at ambulatory medical care visits, according to a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics. The report titled "Medication Therapy in Ambulatory Medical Care" describes medications provided or prescribed in ambulatory care settings. The utilization of drug therapy in ambulatory care is described along three dimensions: number of drugs provided or prescribed (drug mentions), whether a visit had any drug mentions (drug visit), and the average number of drug mentions per 100 visits (drug mention rate). Annual use of medication therapy was determined using data collected in the 1992 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) and the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS).

Data Highlights:

The ambulatory care setting with the greatest percent of visits with medication therapy was the emergency department.
Outpatient departments had the lowest percent of visits with medications.

Patients in the emergency department setting were provided more pain relief type drugs than at the other two ambulatory care settings.

In office-based settings, physicians specializing in cardiovascular disease were more likely to prescribe medications compared with physicians in other specialties.

Keywords: medication therapy, NAMCS, NHAMCS, drug mention

This page last reviewed January 11, 2007