National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 2001 summary.

This report describes ambulatory care visits made to physician offices in the United States. Statistics are presented on selected characteristics of the physician's practice, the patient, and the visit. Results highlighting new items on continuity of care are presented. They include whether the visit was the first or a followup for a problem, number of visits to this provider in the past 12 months for established patients, and whether other physicians shared care for the patient's problem. The report also highlights estimates of practice characteristics for office-based physicians.

The data presented in this report were collected from the 2001 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS). NAMCS is part of the ambulatory care component of the National Health Care Survey that measures health care utilization by various types of providers. NAMCS is a national probability sample survey of visits to office-based physicians in the United States. Sample data are weighted to produce annual national estimates. Selected trends from the 1992 and 1997 NAMCS are also presented.