Visit rate also higher for adults aged 65 years and older
FRIDAY, Sept. 18, 2015 (HealthDay News) — In 2012 there were an estimated 301 physician office visits per 100 persons, with higher rates for females and adults aged 65 years and older, according to a September data brief published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
Jill J. Ashman, Ph.D., from the NCHS in Hyattsville, Md., and colleagues examined the rate of physician office visits by patient age, sex, and state using data from the 2012 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey.
The researchers found that there were an estimated 301 physician office visits per 100 persons in 2012, with the rate higher for females than males. For adults aged 65 years and older, the rate was more than twice that of those aged 18 to 64 years and children aged younger than 18 years. Missouri had the lowest rate of physician office visits and Connecticut had the highest rate among the 34 most populous states. Across the most populous states, the percentage of visits made by adults aged 18 to 64 years with private insurance as the expected source of payment varied from 53 percent in New York and Arkansas to 79 percent in Maryland.
“During 2012, an estimated 929 million visits were made to physician offices in the United States,” the authors write. “There were 171 million visits by children under age 18, representing 18 percent of all physician office visits.”
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