Outpatient care is a large and varied part of the U.S. health system. In 2024, 85.2% of adults and 95.1% of children reported a visit with a doctor or other health care professional during the previous year. The figures below place those visits alongside hospital outpatient activity, ambulatory surgery, procedure mix, and national spending. Measurement years are stated because the sources cover different periods.
Contents
- How common are outpatient visits?
- What outpatient care costs
- Hospital outpatient department activity
- Why patients visit outpatient departments
- Ambulatory surgery volume and setting
- Who receives ambulatory surgery
- Which procedures are most common?
How common are outpatient visits?
The CDC FastStats figures for 2024 show that contact with health professionals was common across age groups. A total of 85.2% of U.S. adults had seen a doctor or another health care professional in the past year, compared with 95.1% of U.S. children. These measures describe whether a person had at least one visit, rather than the number of visits per person.
For physician offices, the CDC FastStats reported 1.0 billion visits in the United States. That equals 320.7 visits per 100 persons. Primary care physicians accounted for 50.3% of physician office visits, meaning roughly half of office-based physician activity was attributed to primary care.
These measures describe different dimensions of outpatient care. The adult and child percentages show reach across the population, the billion-visit total shows overall volume, the rate standardizes visits to population size, and the primary-care share describes the type of physician office involved. They should not be added together or treated as interchangeable counts.
What outpatient care costs
The CMS National Health Expenditure Fact Sheet reported $5.3 trillion in U.S. national health expenditures in 2024. Health spending represented 18.0% of gross domestic product, while spending per person reached $15,474.
Several payer and household measures show how that total was distributed:
- Private health insurance spending was $1,644.6 billion, or 31% of total national health expenditures.
- Medicare spending was $1,118.0 billion, or 21% of total national health expenditures.
- Medicaid spending was $931.7 billion, or 18% of total national health expenditures.
- Out-of-pocket spending was $556.6 billion, or 11% of total national health expenditures.
The same CMS source reported that hospital expenditures grew 8.9% to $1,634.7 billion in 2024. Physician and clinical services expenditures grew 8.1% to $1,109.7 billion. Those categories are broader than outpatient care alone, so the figures should be read as system-wide spending measures rather than outpatient-only totals.
The insured share of the U.S. population was projected at 92.1% for 2024. Medicaid enrollment was projected to decline 7.9% to 84.5 million. Because these are projections, they should be distinguished from the reported spending totals for 2024.
CMS also reported important differences by age and sex using 2020 personal health care spending. Per-person spending was $22,356 for people age 65 and older, $9,154 for working-age people, and $4,217 for children. Older adults were about 17% of the population but accounted for about 37% of personal health care spending. Children were about 23% of the population and accounted for about 10% of spending. Per-person spending was $10,887 for females and $9,554 for males.
Regional and state spending differences
The CMS 2020 figures also show wide geographic variation in per-capita personal health care spending.
| Geography | Per-capita personal health care spending, 2020 |
|---|---|
| New England | $12,728 |
| Mideast | $12,577 |
| Rocky Mountain | $8,497 |
| Southwest | $8,587 |
| United States range | $7,522 in Utah to $14,007 in New York |
New York’s per-capita personal health care spending was 37% above the national average, while Utah’s was about 26% below the national average. California recorded $410.9 billion in personal health care spending and represented 12.2% of total U.S. personal health care spending. Wyoming represented 0.1% of the national total.
Health spending also differed as a share of state economic output. In 2020, health spending represented 28.7% of GDP in West Virginia and 11.7% in Washington state. These state-level measures describe total health spending relative to each state’s economy; they do not measure the percentage of outpatient visits.
Hospital outpatient department activity
The CDC National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey outpatient department tables reported 125,721 thousand hospital outpatient department visits in 2011. That was 41.0 visits per 100 persons per year.
The 2011 tables also reported differences in visit volume by recorded race and ethnicity categories. White patients accounted for 91,152 thousand outpatient department visits, with a rate of 38.0 visits per 100 persons. Black or African American patients accounted for 26,576 thousand visits, with a rate of 67.6 visits per 100 persons. Hispanic or Latino patients accounted for 23,484 thousand visits, with a rate of 45.7 visits per 100 persons.
The counts and rates answer different questions. Counts describe the number of visits attributed to a group, while visits per 100 persons provide a population-based rate. They should not be used to infer individual risk or the share of the population that visited without additional survey definitions.
Age-specific measures in the same 2011 tables included 8,157 thousand visits among White patients age 75 years and over. Black or African American patients age 65–74 had 121.2 outpatient department visits per 100 persons. The age-specific rate is a visit rate, not a percentage of people who used outpatient care.
Disposition after the visit provides another view of outpatient activity. In 2011, 69.3% of outpatient department visits resulted in a return at a specified time. A further 13.8% resulted in referral to another physician, and 0.8% resulted in referral to an emergency department. These outcomes describe recorded visit dispositions, not the eventual health outcomes of patients.
Why patients visit outpatient departments
The CDC 2011 outpatient department tables identified several leading principal reasons for visits. Cough accounted for 2,631 thousand visits, routine prenatal examination for 2,398 thousand, and diabetes mellitus for 2,339 thousand. Well-baby examination accounted for 1,915 thousand visits, while hypertension accounted for 1,369 thousand.
Together, these figures show that outpatient departments served both acute and preventive needs. Cough represents a symptom-based reason for care, while prenatal and well-baby examinations are preventive or routine services. Diabetes mellitus and hypertension represent chronic-condition-related reasons. The source reports these as principal reasons, so they should not be interpreted as the full list of conditions addressed during each visit.
Because these observations are from 2011, they provide a historical snapshot rather than a current estimate of the reasons for outpatient department visits. The measurement year is especially important when comparing them with the 2024 physician-office and national-spending figures.
Ambulatory surgery volume and setting
The NCHS National Health Statistics Reports, report 102, measured ambulatory surgery in 2010 across hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers. There were 28.6 million ambulatory surgery visits, and 48.3 million surgical and nonsurgical ambulatory surgery procedures were performed.
Of those procedures, 25.7 million were performed in hospitals and 22.5 million in ambulatory surgery centers. The setting split was 53% in hospitals and 47% in ASCs. This distinction matters because a visit is not the same unit as a procedure: one ambulatory surgery visit could involve more than one procedure.
Expected payment sources for ambulatory surgery visits in 2010 were also reported:
- Private insurance was the expected payment source for 51% of visits.
- Medicare was the expected payment source for 31%.
- Medicaid was the expected payment source for 8%.
- Self-pay was the expected payment source for 4%.
Discharge status was generally routine. Among visits with a specified discharge disposition, 95% had a routine discharge, while 2% resulted in inpatient admission. The remaining share is not specified here, so the two percentages should not be treated as a complete accounting of every visit.
Who receives ambulatory surgery
Adults ages 45–64 accounted for 39% of ambulatory surgery procedures in 2010, the largest age group listed in the NCHS report. People age 65–74 accounted for 19%, and people age 75 and over accounted for 14%. People age 15–44 accounted for 22%, while people under age 15 accounted for 6%.
The age distribution can be summarized compactly:
| Patient age | Share of ambulatory surgery procedures, 2010 |
|---|---|
| Under 15 | 6% |
| 15–44 | 22% |
| 45–64 | 39% |
| 65–74 | 19% |
| 75 and over | 14% |
The five clinical categories that concentrated about 70% of all 48.3 million ambulatory surgery procedures accounted for 72% of procedures performed on females and 67% of procedures performed on males. Those percentages describe concentration within the sex-specific procedure totals and do not identify the five categories individually in the supplied report summary.
Which procedures are most common?
In 2010, operations on the digestive system accounted for 10.0 million ambulatory surgery procedures. Operations on the eye accounted for 7.9 million, followed by operations on the musculoskeletal system at 7.1 million. Operations on the integumentary system accounted for 4.3 million, and operations on the nervous system accounted for 4.2 million.
Several specific procedures were also reported. Endoscopy of the large intestine, including colonoscopies, was performed 4.0 million times. Endoscopy of the small intestine was performed 2.2 million times, and endoscopic polypectomy of the large intestine 1.1 million times. Cataract lens extraction was performed 2.9 million times, while cataract lens insertion was performed 2.6 million times.
Other procedure counts included 1.0 million operations on eyelids, 1.3 million operations on muscle, tendon, fascia, and bursa, and 1.2 million excisions or destructions of lesions or tissue of skin and subcutaneous tissue. Injection of an agent into the spinal canal was performed 2.9 million times.
Procedure time varied by service. Average operating-room time for ambulatory surgery was 57 minutes, average surgical time was 33 minutes, and average postoperative care time was 70 minutes. Endoscopies averaged 14 minutes, large-intestine endoscopic polypectomy averaged 21 minutes, and cataract lens extraction or insertion averaged 10 minutes. Operations on the eyelids averaged 23 minutes, while knee arthroscopy averaged 32 minutes.
These time measures are averages from 2010 and should not be used as scheduling guarantees for an individual patient. They describe operating-room, surgical, postoperative, or procedure time as defined by the NCHS report, rather than a complete patient journey from arrival through discharge.