Ambulatory Care Visits to Physician Offices, Hospital Outpatient Departments, and Emergency Departments: United States, 1995 The National Center for Health Statistics has recently released a report that describes ambulatory care visits in the United States across three ambulatory care settings--physician offices, hospital outpatient departments, and hospital emergency departments. This report is entitled "Ambulatory Care Visits to Physician Offices, Hospital Outpatient Departments, and Emergency Departments: United States, 1995." Statistics are based on data collected from a national sample of office-based physicians and the outpatient and emergency departments of non-Federal, general, and short-stay hospitals in the United States. Ambulatory medical care services are described in terms of patient and visit characteristics overall, and across the various types of medical care settings. The data presented in this report were collected by the 1995 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and the 1995 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. Data Highlights: During 1995, an estimated 860.9 million visits were made to physician offices, hospital outpatient departments, and hospital emergency departments in the United States, which represents an overall rate of 3.3 visits per person. Visits to office-based physicians accounted for 81.0 percent of ambulatory care utilization, followed by visits to emergency departments (11.2 percent), and outpatient departments (7.8 percent). Persons under 25 years of age showed a much higher utilization of the emergency department visits for injuries compared with other age groups. Keywords: ambulatory care visits, diagnoses, injury
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January 11, 2007
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