Office visits have a chronic problem

Chronic problems were the most common reason for office visits to physicians in 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

That year, chronic problems were the major reason for 40% of all office-based physician visits, making them significantly more common than the other four broad categories of visit types: new problem (26%), preventive care (19%), injury (9%), and pre- or postsurgery care (6%), the NCHS said in a recent Data Brief.

Children were significantly more likely to have a new problem (41% of visits) or get preventive care (32%) than were the other age groups and were significantly less likely to have a chronic problem (18%) or to receive pre- or postsurgery care (2%), according to data from the 2014 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, which included 45,710 visit records from 9,989 physicians.

rfranki@frontlinemedcom.com

SOURCE: Ashman JJ et al. NCHS Data Brief. 2017;(292):1-8e.