PODCAST: The Toll of COVID-19 on Physician Practices

September 30, 2022

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/podcasts/2022/20220930/20220930.htm

HOST:  The COVID-19 pandemic took a major toll on the U.S. health care system.  In a new report released on September 28, data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey were used to examine how COVID-19 impacted physician practices around the country.

Joining us to discuss that new study is Zach Peters, a health statistician with the NCHS Division of Health Care Statistics.

HOST:  What did you hope to achieve with this study?

ZACK PETERS:  This study was intended to produce nationally representative estimates of experiences at physician offices.  So it’s a physician level study and we really wanted to highlight some of the important experiences physicians had due to the pandemic, such as shortages of personal protective equipment.  And it highlights whether testing was common in physician, whether physicians were testing positive or people in their office were testing positive for COVID-19 given that they were on the front lines of helping to treat patients.  So we really wanted to touch on a broad set of experiences faced by physicians.  This certainly isn’t the first study to assess experiences and challenges faced by health care providers during the pandemic but often times those other studies are limited to specific facilities or locations or cohorts and can’t be generalized more broadly.  So a big benefit of a lot of the NCHS surveys is that we can produce nationally representative estimates and this study is an example of that.

HOST:  And what kind of impact has the pandemic had on physicians and their practices?

ZACH PETERS:  In having done quite a bit of literature review for this project it became pretty clear – and I think just listening to the news you sort of understood a lot of the impact.  A lot of research has shown that that health care providers experienced a lot of burnout or fatigue.  There was a lot of exposure and what not to COVID-19.  Long hours… So there’s a lot out there in in the literature that sort of cites some of the challenges.  What we really, what this study highlighted was it was the level of shortages of personal protective equipment that were faced.  About one in three physicians said that they had they had experienced personal protective equipment shortages due specifically to the pandemic .  The study highlighted that a large portion of physicians had to turn away patients who were either COVID confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients.  And I think the last thing this really helped to show was the shift in the use of telemedicine due to the pandemic.  So prior to March of 2020 there were less than half of physicians at physician offices who were using telemedicine for patient care and that number, that percentage jumped to nearly 90% of office based physicians using telemedicine after March of 2020.  So this is sort of adding to the broader literature with some nationally representative estimates of experiences that providers had due to and during the pandemic.

HOST:  So what sort of personal protective equipment was most affected during this study?

ZACH PETERS:  It’s a good question.  The way in which we asked the questions about shortages of “PPE” – I’ll call it I guess – don’t allow us from really untangling that question.  We asked about face mask shortages, N-95 respirator shortages specifically, but then the second question we asked sort of grouped isolation gowns, gloves, and eye protection into one question.  So physicians didn’t really have the chance to check off specifically what they had shortages of other than face masks.  So it’s somewhat hard to untangle that but these results show that about one in five physicians faced N-95 respirator, face mask shortages due to the pandemic and a slightly higher – though we didn’t test significance in this in this report – a slightly higher percentage, about 25% of physicians, had shortages of isolation gowns,  gloves, or eye protection or some combination of those three. 

HOST:  And you say that nearly four in 10 physicians had to turn away COVID patients.  Now, was this due to a high volume of patients or a lack of staff?

ZACH PETERS:  Again that’s another great question. I think unfortunately we weren’t able to ask a lot of these really interesting follow-ups to some of these experiences. We didn’t get to pry physicians on some of the reasons why they had these experiences, including why they had to turn away patients.  So unfortunately we’re not able to answer some of the “why” questions that we would like with these data.

HOST:  And do you have any data on where these patients were referred to, the ones that were turned away?  Do you have any information on that?

ZACH PETERS:  Again unfortunately this specific question wasn’t something that we asked in the set of new COVID questions introduced in the 2020 NAMCS we did ask a question about whether physicians who had to turn away patients had a location where they could refer COVID-19 patients.  So there are a few reasons – we haven’t assessed that measure in this work so far, but it’s certainly an area we can dig into more especially as we have additional data from the 2021 NAMCS and can try to combine over time.

HOST:  Does it look like the shift to telemedicine visits is here to stay?

ZACH PETERS:  The broader literature sort of highlights that these changes are broad and likely indicate that physician offices and different health care settings have built up the infrastructure to allow for telemedicine use in the future.  And so it’ll be interesting to see if, as waves of COVID or other infections ebb and flow, if we see that the use of telemedicine kind of ebbs and flows along with that.  But I think the option for telemedicine is something that health care settings won’t get rid of now that they have them. 

HOST:  Sticking with the topic of telemedicine – did physicians list any benefits to telemedicine visits other than limiting exposure to COVID-19?

ZACH PETERS:  The set of questions that we asked physicians were limited in scope and we didn’t really have that level of follow-up.  There are some additional questions about telemedicine use that we asked and hope to be able to dig into further.  We asked physicians what percentage of their visits they had used telemedicine and some other questions about just kind of the scope of use, but not necessarily the benefits that they felt they received due to using telemedicine.

HOST:  Is it possible that you might be getting some data on these questions in the future?

ZACH PETERS:  These questions were introduced part way through the 2020 survey year, so we were only able to ask half of our physician sample about these experiences in the 2020 survey.  But we kept the exact same set of COVID related questions in the 2021 NAMCS survey year and so we’re working to finalize the 2021 data and hope to be able to look into some of the more nuanced aspects of this that we might be interested in, such as trends over time if we combine years.  So we might be able to assess differences in experiences based on the characteristics of physicians.  So yeah, we asked these specific questions in the 2021 survey year so hope to have some additional information to put out for folks.

HOST:  You were talking a little bit about the fact that you made changes to the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, which this study is based on, which allowed you to collect more complete data during this period. Could you again sort of go over what sort of changes you made?

ZACH PETERS:  Yes the NAMCS team with the Division of Health Care Statistics, we made changes to a few of our surveys partway through the 2020 survey year.  Partly out of necessity and partly out of just interest in an unfolding public health crisis.  So for NAMCS two big changes were made. The first was that we had to cancel visit record abstraction at physician offices.  So historically we have collected a sample of visit records or encounter records from physicians to be able to publish estimates on health care utilization at physician offices due to sort of wanting to keep our participants safe, our data collectors safe, and patients safe.  We cancelled abstraction partly into the 2020 survey year so that was an important change in that we won’t be able to produce visit estimates from the survey year.  But the other change that we made – I think I alluded to it earlier – was that partway through the survey year we introduced a series of COVID-19 related questions, which is what this report summarizes.  And the reason it came partway through the survey year is simply due to the fact that adding a series of new questions to a national survey takes a lot of planning and a lot of levels of review and approval.  So this is partly why we were only able to ask these questions of half of our survey sample.

HOST:  Are there any other changes forthcoming in the NAMCS or for that matter any of your other health care surveys?

ZACH PETERS:  Historically there have been a few different types of providers that have been excluded from our sample frame.  We didn’t include anesthesiologists working in office-based settings, radiologists working in office-based settings.  So we had a few different types of promoting specialties that we couldn’t speak to in terms of their office characteristics and their care that they provided.  In future years we are hoping to expand to include other provider types that we haven’t in the past so I think that’s the big change going forward for the traditional NAMCS.  We also have a kind of a second half of NAMCS that looks at health centers in the U.S., and the big change for that survey in the 2021 survey years that we are in is instead of abstracting a sample of visit records, are we are starting to collect electronic health record data from health centers.  So that’s another a different portion of NAMCS but those are a couple of the big changes at high level that are implementing in NAMCS. 

HOST:  What would you say is the main take-home message you’d like people to know about this study?

ZACH PETERS:  I think the main strength of using data from NCHS in general is that many of our surveys allow for nationally representative estimates and NAMCS is the same in that regard.  We sampled physicians in a way that allows us to produce nationally representative estimates.  And so I think this study highlights how we’re able to leverage our surveys in a way that other studies that you might see in the literature can’t in that they’re more cohort-based.  So I think another important aspect of this is just that it highlights an example of some of the adaptations that DHCS end and NCHS more broadly, some of the adaptations that we made during the pandemic to better collect data and disseminate data.  And so outside of the topic being hopefully important to understand how physicians nationally experienced various things related to the pandemic, this highlights some of the ways in which NCHS was able to remain nimble during a public health crisis.

MUSIC

HOST:  On September 1, NCHS released a new report looking at emergency department visits for chronic conditions associated with severe COVID illness.  The data, collected through the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, were collected during the pre-pandemic period of 2017-2019 and serve as a useful baseline, since it is well established that chronic conditions increase the risk of hospitalization among COVID patients.  The report showed that during this pre-pandemic period, hypertension was present in one-third of all emergency department visits by adults, and diabetes and hypertension were also present together in one-third of these visits.

On the 7th of September, NCHS released a study focusing on mental health treatment among adults during both the pre-pandemic and pandemic period, 2019 to 2021.  It has been documented by the Household Pulse Survey and other studies that anxiety and depression increased during 2020 and the beginning of 2021, and this new study focuses on the use of counseling or therapy, and/or the use of medication for mental health during this period.   The study found there was a small increase in the use of mental health treatment among adults from 2019 to 2021, with slightly larger increases among non-Hispanic white and Asian people.

Also this month, NCHS updated two of its interactive web dashboards, featuring data from the revamped National Hospital Care Survey.  On September 12, the dashboard on COVID-19 data from selected hospitals in the United States was updated, and two days later the dashboard featuring data on hospital encounters associated with drug use was updated. 

On the same day, September 14, NCHS released the latest monthly estimates of deaths from drug overdoses in the country, through April of this year, showing 108,174 people died from overdoses in the one-year period ending in April.  This death total was a 7% increase from the year before.  Over two-thirds of these overdose deaths were from fentanyl or other synthetic opioids. 

On September 29, the latest infant mortality data for the U.S. was released, based on the 2020 linked birth and infant death file, which is based on birth and death certificates registered in all 50 states and DC. 

Finally, September is Suicide Prevention Month, and on the final day of the month, NCHS released its first full-year 2021 data on suicides in the country.  For the first time in three years, suicide in the United States increased.  A total of 47,646 suicides took place in 2021, according to the provisional data used in the report.  The rate of suicide was 14 suicides per 100,000 people.

MUSIC FADES

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QuickStats: Percentage of Office-Based Physicians Who Had Telephone or Internet/Email Consults with Patients — National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, United States, 2018 and 2020

April 1, 2022

The percentage of office-based physicians who reported having telephone consults with patients during their last normal week of practice increased from 35.8% in 2018 to 57.4% in 2020.

The percentage who reported having Internet/email consults with patients also increased from 13.9% in 2018 to 26.8% in 2020.

In both years, physicians were more likely to report having telephone than Internet/email consults.

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, 2018 and 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/ahcd/about_ahcd.htm

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7113a4.htm

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QuickStats: Distribution of Emergency Department Visits Made by Adults, by Age and Number of Chronic Conditions — United States, 2017–2019

January 7, 2022

During 2017–2019, 38.5% of adult emergency department visits were made by patients with no chronic conditions, 22.9% made by those with one, 15.3% made by those with two, and 23.3% made by those with three or more chronic conditions.

The percentage of adult emergency department visits made by patients with no chronic conditions or one chronic condition decreased with age, from 58.0% among patients aged 18–44 years to 8.5% among patients aged ≥75 years with no chronic conditions and from 24.4% among patients aged 18–44 years to 18.5% among patients aged ≥75 years with one chronic condition.

In contrast, the percentage of visits by patients with two or three or more chronic conditions increased with age, from 10.5% among patients aged 18–44 years to 20.8% among patients aged ≥75 years with two conditions and from 7.1% among patients aged 18–44 years to 52.1% among patients aged ≥75 years with three or more chronic conditions.

Source: The National Center for Health Statistics, National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, 2017–2019. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/ahcd/ahcd_questionnaires.htm

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7101a6.htm

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Emergency Department Visit Rates by Selected Characteristics: United States, 2018

March 9, 2021

Questions for Christopher Cairns, Health Statistician and Lead Author of “Emergency Department Visit Rates by Selected Characteristics: National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, United States, 2018.”

Q: Do you have trend data on emergency department visit rates that goes further back than 2007?

CC: We do have annual reports of emergency department visits prior to 2007 that include emergency department visit rates. These reports are available at the National Center for Health Statistics website, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/ahcd/ahcd_reports.htm.

Q: Was there a specific finding in the data that surprised you from this report?

CC: There were no surprising findings as our findings in this report are similar to the estimates from 2017.

Q: How did you obtain this data for this report?

CC: Data were obtained through the annual National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey which collects patient and hospital data on emergency department visits. These data are publicly available at ftp://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/Health_Statistics/NCHS/Datasets/NHAMCS

Q: What is the take home message for this report?

CC: Emergency department visit rates vary by many patient and hospital characteristics. This report gives an overview regarding the nation’s status of emergency department visits.

Q: Does this report include multiple visits or just one emergency department visit by an individual?

CC: These data represent approximately 130 million emergency department visits made in 2018. It is possible that the same person could have had multiple visits to the ED over the course of the year. This data is not collected, so it is not possible to know how often this happens.

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Urban-rural Differences in Visits to Office-based Physicians by Adults with Hypertension: United States, 2014–2016

November 12, 2020

Questions for Danielle Davis, Health Statistician and Lead Author of “Urban-rural Differences in Visits to Office-based Physicians by Adults With Hypertension: United States, 2014–2016.”

Q: Why did you decide to research urban-rural differences in visits to office-based physicians by adults with hypertension?

DD: During grad school, I worked on a project with the Baltimore City Health Department where I learned about racial disparities in Hypertensive Disorders of Pregnancy. Black women, and sometimes their babies were dying from this disorder without concrete reasons as to why. Some of the women had never been diagnosed with hypertension or other risk factors but would still develop this disorder. It led us to looking at other causes, such as environmental and residential stressors considering these women live in a unique urban setting. I decided to take this knowledge and look at hypertension in the US population as a whole to see how hypertension differed by urban-rural residences.

Q: Was there a specific finding in the data that surprised you from this report?

DD: It was surprising to see a significantly higher percentage of hypertension in non-Hispanic Black adults in Large metro urban and large metro suburban counties in comparison to non-Hispanic White and Hispanic adults.

Q: How did you obtain this data for this report?

DD: Data are from the 2014–2016 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS), a nationally representative survey of visits to nonfederal, office-based physicians. This data is collected by the National Center for Health Statistics.

Q: Is this the most recent data you have on this topic?

DD: Yes.  This is the most recent data we have on this topic.

Q: What is the take home message for this report?

DD: I think the take home message for this report is visits by adults who lived in large metro suburban areas was lower than visits by adults who lived in small-medium metro areas and rural areas. Visits by men with hypertension was higher than visits by women overall, in large metro suburban areas, small medium metro areas, and rural areas. The percentage of visits with hypertension increased with age and was observed in all areas. Lastly, the percentage of visits by non-Hispanic Black adults with hypertension was higher than visits for non-Hispanic White adults and for Hispanic adults. The same pattern was observed in large metro urban and large metro suburban areas.

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Trends in Opioids Prescribed at Discharge From Emergency Departments Among Adults: United States, 2006–2017

January 8, 2020

Questions for Lead Author Anna Rui, Health Statistician, of “Trends in Opioids Prescribed at Discharge From Emergency Departments Among Adults: United States, 2006–2017.”

Q: Why did you decide to look at opioid prescribing at emergency department discharges?

AR: There is a large body of research reporting increases in opioid prescription rates from 1999 to 2010 but less is known about how rates have changed from 2010 on, particularly in the emergency department setting, where many patients present with pain symptoms and are likely to receive opioids for treatment. In response to the opioid epidemic, hundreds of local, state, and federal programs were implemented in recent years with the goal of changing prescribing practices. A goal of this report was to evaluate recent trends in opioid prescribing, in order to monitor the effects of public health policy.

Q: How did the data vary by patient/hospital characteristics and in the type of opioids prescribed at discharge?

AR: Variation in the rate of change was found for age, patient residence, and primary expected source of payment. The rate of decrease in the percentage of visits with an opioid prescribed at discharge by younger patients aged 18-44 from both the beginning of the study period (2006-2007) and from the inflection point (2010-2011) to the end of the study period (2016-2017) was the highest across all age groups. Similarly, the percentage of visits by patients living in medium or small metropolitan counties decreased by the highest percentage across the study period among all urban and rural categories. Both Medicaid and self-pay/no charge/charity experienced the highest rate of decrease from 2010-2011 through 2016-2017 whereas the percentage of visits by patients with Medicare that included an opioid prescribed at discharge remained stable across the study period.

In terms of hospital characteristics, among the four regions, the largest decrease in opioids prescribed at discharge from 2006-2007 to 2016-2017 was observed in the Northeast region. Generally, a higher percentage of visits at proprietary (or for-profit) hospital EDs, compared with nonprofit and government hospital EDs, included an opioid prescribed at discharge. Despite the high percentage, the rate of decrease among visits made to proprietary hospital EDs from 2006-2007 through 2016-2017 was modest.

In terms of the type of opioids prescribed, the percentage of opioid mentions with acetaminophen-hydrocodone (e.g., Vicodin) prescribed remained stable through 2012-2013 and decreased starting from 2014-2015. Corresponding to this decrease, the percentage of opioid mentions with tramadol and acetaminophen-codeine, which are known as having a lesser risk of dependence, increased starting in 2014-2015 and continued through 2016-2017.

Q: Was there a specific finding in the data that surprised you?

AR: One finding that surprised me was the magnitude of decrease in the percentage of opioids prescribed from 2010-2011 through 2016-2017 for most of the pain-related diagnoses. For example, the percentage of visits for extremity and back pain decreased by 68.8% and 49.1%, respectively, between 2010-2011 and 2016-2017.

Q: How did you obtain this data for this report?

AR: Restricted data (available from the Research Data Center) collected from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey were used for this report. Masked public use data are available for download from the Ambulatory Health Care Data website (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/ahcd/datasets_documentation_related.htm)

Q: What is the take home message for this report?

AR: I think the take home message of the report is recent trends show a decrease in the percentage of visits with opioids prescribed at discharge from 2010-2011 through 2016-2017, and this trend was observed for most of the patient and hospital characteristics examined, as well as for most of the pain-related diagnoses prompting the ED visit.

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Characteristics of Asthma Visits to Physician Offices in the United States: 2012–2015 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey

September 20, 2019

Questions for Lead Author Lara Akinbami, Health Statistician, of “Characteristics of Asthma Visits to Physician Offices in the United States: 2012–2015 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey.”

Q: Why did you decide to do a report on asthma visits to physician offices?

LK: Asthma is a common chronic condition in the United States: in 2016 8.3% of the population had asthma.  Each year, there are nearly 2 million emergency department visits, over 300,000 hospitalizations and more than 3.500 deaths in the United States due to asthma.

These adverse outcomes arise when episodic asthma attacks become severe.  A key part of preventing these adverse asthma outcomes is the prevention of attacks, and early recognition and management of symptoms.  Physicians in non-emergent community settings have a key role in partnering with people with asthma in identifying and monitoring symptoms, and developing a plan to avoid things that trigger attacks, and providing a medication plan to reduce symptoms when they do arise.  There are evidence-based national asthma guidelines that provide recommendations on how to best manage asthma that are directed toward care in physician offices (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7232/).  Furthermore, asthma is now increasingly recognized as a risk factor for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the fourth leading cause of death in the US, and diagnosis and management of asthma is as an important part of monitoring lung health through the lifespan.

For all these reasons, assessing trends in visits to physician offices is useful in tracking the characteristics of asthma patients, the reasons asthma patients seek care (routine monitoring or acute care), and the services provided in these visits.  These help answer questions that can direct interventions, for example, “Are certain groups less likely to seek care in office settings?” Or “Are guideline recommendations being followed?”

Q: How did the data vary by age, sex and race?

LK: Asthma visit rates tend to reflect the prevalence of asthma in the population, but with some notable exceptions.  Asthma prevalence is higher in children than in adults, and children have higher asthma physician office visit rates than adults.  However, although asthma prevalence peaks in mid-childhood, we see high rates of asthma visits among children 0-4 years of age.  This is because these very young children have smaller airways.  They are more likely to show symptoms with any conditions that further narrows the airways, such as respiratory infections.

Another interesting pattern is that asthma prevalence is higher among boys than girls, in contrast to among adults in whom women have higher asthma prevalence than men.  Asthma visit rates also reflect this pattern with boys having higher visit rates than girls, and women having higher visit rates than men.  However, once the differences in prevalence are accounted for by looking at just people who have asthma, boys with asthma have similar asthma visit rates as girls with asthma, and the same is true for men and women with asthma.  The one exception is that very young boys ages 0-4 yeas with asthma still have higher rates of asthma visits than 0-4 year old girls with asthma.

By race and Hispanic origin, asthma visit rates are similar between groups with no differences seen between asthma visits rates for non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black and Hispanic persons.  Asthma visit rates were lower for persons of non-Hispanic other race.  However, this pattern does not reflect asthma prevalence which is higher for non-Hispanic black persons than non-Hispanic white and Hispanic persons.

Q: Is this the first time you have published a report on this topic?

LK: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes regular asthma surveillance reports on asthma that provide analysis of trends and estimates of the most recent data for asthma prevalence, health care utilization and death.  The CDC also provides a web page with the most recent asthma data: https://www.cdc.gov/asthma/most_recent_national_asthma_data.htm.  However, this report is only the second since 1996 to analyze asthma visits to physician offices in depth, including the degree to which services in asthma visits reflect recommendations in the national asthma guidelines.  These guidelines were originally released in 1991 with the most recent update in 2007.  When findings of this report which analyzed data from 2012-2015 is compared to the 1996 report that analyzed data from 1993-1994, we found that despite an increase in asthma prevalence over this period, the annual average number of asthma visits declined from 11 million in 1993-1994 to 10.2 million in 2012-2015.  Medications in 2012-2015 included newer medications that target airway inflammation.  A similar percentage of asthma visits were seen by primary care physicians as opposed to asthma specialists, 65% in 1993-1994 and 60% in 2012-2015.  However, there was less progress in increasing the implementation of national asthma guidelines than would be expected given the effort to increase uptake of key recommendations such as providing an asthma action plan and documenting asthma severity and control.

Q: Was there a specific finding in your report that surprised you?

LK: Given the emphasis on the importance of assessing and documenting asthma control, only 40.9% of asthma visits to physician offices had a level of asthma control documented.  The distribution between levels of asthma control was expected with 29.1% of patients with well controlled asthma, 10.5% with not well controlled asthma and 1.3% of patients with very poorly controlled asthma.  However, that 59.1% of asthma patients had no level of control documented was surprising given the concerted efforts to have asthma control assessed and documented.  These efforts included quality of care measurements, physician continuing education, a Guideline Implementation Report (https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/files/docs/guidelines/gip_rpt.pdf), and local quality improvement projects.

Q: What is the take home message for this report?

LK: Asthma is a common chronic condition and a common reason for physician office visits.  Given its high burden in morbidity, health care use, and mortality, it is important to assess the content of asthma physician office visits given that physicians are the on the “front line” of asthma care and provide the majority of asthma care.  Rates for asthma visits to physician offices started to decline before total office visit rates declined.  Asthma education, objective monitoring (pulmonary function  testing) and level of asthma control were documented in a minority of visits.  Quick-acting relief medication remained the most frequently mentioned medication class.  Additional research can explore the underlying reasons for trends, and future policy can target low implementation rates of guideline recommendations.

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Characteristics of Office-based Physician Visits, 2016

January 24, 2019

A new NCHS report examines visit rates by age and sex. It also examines visit characteristics—including insurance status, reason for visit, and services—by age. Estimates use data from the 2016 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey.

Key Findings:

  • In 2016, there were an estimated 278 office-based physician visits per 100 persons.
  • The visit rate among females exceeded the rate for males, and the rates for both infants and older adults exceeded the rates for those aged 1–64 years.
  • Private insurance was the primary expected source of payment for the majority of visits by children under age 18 and adults aged 18–64, whereas Medicare was the primary expected source of payment for the majority of visits by adults aged 65 and over.
  • Compared with adults, a larger percentage of visits by children were for either preventive care or a new problem.
  • Compared with children, a larger percentage of visits by adults included an imaging service that was ordered or provided.

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Characteristics of Office-based Physician Visits, 2015

June 5, 2018

Jill Ashman, Ph.D., Health Statistician

Questions for Jill Ashman, Ph.D., Health Statistician, and Lead Author of “Characteristics of Office-based Physician Visits, 2015”

Q: What made you write this report on doctors’ office visits?

JA: Our intent in producing this data brief is to provide the annual summary of National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) data. Last year we created the format for this NAMCS summary report using 2014 data, and we are currently working on the 2016 summary. These summary reports provide a snapshot of the care provided at office-based physician offices.

Q: Was there a result in your study that surprised you?

JA:  While there is a notable finding in the report, generally the patterns are what we expected to find and are consistent with a similar report looking at office visits in 2014. One notable finding is the relatively low percentage of visits for preventive care among adults 18 years or older (21% for ages 18-64 and 13% for those aged 65 years or older).

Q: What differences or similarities did you see between or among various demographic groups, such as age and sex, in this analysis?

JA:  We noted a number of differences among various groups examined in this report. In terms of visit rates, we found that females visited the doctor’s office at a higher rate than males. We also found that the visit rate for infants and older adults exceeded the rates for those aged 1-64 years.

We also found age variation with primary expected sources of payment, the major reason for a doctor’s office visit, and for the services provided at the physician visit. Medicaid was the primary expected source of payment at a higher percentage of visits by children (38%) than adults, and Medicare was the primary expected source of payment at a higher percentage of visits by adults aged 65 and older (79%) compared with patients under 65 years. Having no insurance at all was at a higher percentage of visits by adults aged 18-64 (9%) than those aged 65 and over (2%). Also, compared with adults, a larger percentage of office visits by children were for either preventive care (33%) or a new problem (41%). Additionally, visits by children (compared with adults) were less likely to include a laboratory test, imaging service, or procedure that was ordered or provided. No variation by age was observed for office visits for an injury or that included an examination or screening service.

Q:  What is new in this report that has not already been published?

JA: This report provides the most recent nationally representative estimates of office-based physician visits in the United States. To our knowledge, age differences in the selected characteristics of patients accessing the doctor’s office in 2015 have not already been published.

Q: What sort of trend data do you have on this topic that will help us see how doctor’s office visits have evolved over time?

JA: With a number of years of data, we can look at trends over time by examining other National Center for Health Statistics reports. We released a similar report last year that looked at age variation in the same selected characteristics of office-based physician visits made in 2014. Comparing the results of both reports shows little change in the patterns of selected characteristics from 2014 to 2015. However, one notable change was an observed increase from 2014 to 2015 in the percentage of health education and counseling services ordered or provided overall and among the three age groups examined.

For older years of data, we provide detailed summary tables on our website going back as far as 2008 that can be used to help see how office-based physician visits have evolved over time. The summary tables can be found here.

Q: What would you say is the take-home message of this report?

JA: The take-home message from this report is that there is a wide variation by age in the characteristics of visits to office-based physicians in the United States in 2015. Larger differences were observed in the services ordered or provided and in the major reason for the office visit between children under 18 years and adults aged 18 or older.

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Characteristics of Office-based Physician Visits, 2014

December 12, 2017

In 2014, most Americans had a usual place to receive health care (86% of adults and 97% of children). A majority of children and adults listed a doctor’s office as the usual place they received care. In 2014, there were an estimated 885 million office-based physician visits in the United States.

A new NCHS report examines office-based physician visit rates by age and sex. It also examines visit characteristics, including insurance status, reason for visit, and services, by age. Estimates use data from the 2014 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS).

Findings:

  • In 2014, there were an estimated 282 office-based physician visits per 100 persons.
  • The visit rate among females exceeded the rate for males, and the rates for both infants and older adults exceeded the rates for those aged 1–64 years.
  • Compared with other age groups, a higher percentage of visits by adults aged 18–64 indicated no insurance.
  • A larger percentage of visits by children under age 18 years were for either preventive care or a new problem, compared with adults aged 18 and over.
  • Compared with children, a larger percentage of visits by adults included a laboratory test, imaging service, or a procedure being ordered or provided.

Leave a Comment » | National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey | Permalink
Posted by briantsai

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