Healthcare Financial News

Patients in the United States made an estimated 1.1 billion visits to physician offices and hospital outpatient and emergency departments (EDs) in 2006--an average of four visits per person per year, according to new healthcare statistics released Aug. 6 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The data come from various components of CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics National Health Care Survey and are featured in a series of new national health statistics reports.

Among the findings:
* The number of visits to physician offices and hospital outpatient and EDs increased by 26 percent from 1996 to 2006.
* In 2006, seven out of 10 visits had at least one medication provided, prescribed, or continued, for a total of 2.6 billion medications overall.
* The ED served as the route of admission to hospital inpatient services for roughly 50 percent of nonobstetric hospital patients in 2006, up from 36 percent in 1996.
*  Patients with Medicaid use the ED more frequently than patients with private insurance--82 per 100 persons for Medicaid versus 21 per 100 for private insurance.

Access the healthcare reports.

Millions of U.S. residents who have chronic conditions are not receiving appropriate care because they are uninsured, according to a study published Aug. 5 in Annals of Internal Medicine.

For the study, researchers analyzed health surveys of adults ages 18 to 64 conducted by the federal government. The researchers found that of the 36 million people who reported having no health insurance in 2004--the latest data examined by the study--about 11 million people had been diagnosed with a chronic condition. However, researchers noted the estimate likely is low because it does not factor in uninsured U.S. residents who have a chronic condition with which they have not yet been diagnosed. The study also found that less than 25 percent of the uninsured with a chronic condition reported seeing a physician within the previous year and that about 7 percent said they would visit the emergency department if they needed care.

The researchers noted that the study raises doubts regarding the common assumption that many uninsured U.S. residents are young and healthy. Read the abstract.