National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 1996 emergency department summary.

Objectives: This report describes ambulatory care visits to hospital emergency departments in the United States. Statistics are presented on selected patient and visit characteristics.

Methods: The data presented in this report were collected from the 1996 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS). NHAMCS is part of the ambulatory care component of the National Health Care Survey that measures health care utilization across various types of providers. NHAMCS is a national probability survey of visits to hospital emergency and outpatient departments of non-Federal, short-stay, and general hospitals in the United States. Sample data were weighted to produce annual estimates.

Results: During 1996, an estimated 90.3 million visits were made to hospital emergency departments (ED's) in the United States, about 34.2 visits per 100 persons. Persons 75 years and over had the highest rate of emergency department visits. There were an estimated 34.9 million injury-related emergency department visits during 1996, or 13.2 visits per 100 persons. There were 110,000 visits related to injuries caused by firearms, including 73,000 visits for gunshot wounds. Almost one-fifth of the injury visits were work-related for persons 18-64 years of age. Almost four-fifths of the ED visits involved medication therapy. Pain relief drugs accounted for almost 30 percent of the medications mentioned. Acute upper respiratory infection was the leading illness related diagnosis for ED visits.