The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued an analysis about the more than 1 billion visits that Americans made to physicians’ offices, emergency rooms, and hospital outpatient departments in 2004. Hospital outpatient departments accounted for 85 million of those visits, representing 29.5 visits per 100 people. About 70% of the visits were to not-for-profit hospitals, and government sources paid for 46.3% of those visits. Females had higher number of outpatient department visits than men--35.1 per 100 people compared with 23.6 per 100 for men--and African Americans had higher rates of visits than did whites--50.3 per 100 versus 27 per 100. Females made three-quarters of preventive care visits, and Hispanic patients had twice the rate of preventive care visits than non-Hispanics. Screening and diagnostic services were performed at 90% of visits, half of visits involved therapeutic and preventive services, and medications were ordered at 67.4% of visits.
In a separate report on emergency room visits, the CDC analysis found that the amount of time a patient waited before seeing a physician in the emergency department increased from 38 minutes in 1997 to 47 minutes in 2004. On average, patients spent 3.3 hours in the ED. Patients were admitted in 13% of ED visits and were transferred to other facilities in 2% of visits.
