U.S. Ambulatory Care Visits by Age, Sex, and Race

2017-2019 data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey tracks visits to physician offices, outpatient, and emergency departments. The dataset includes estimates broken down by population characteristics like age, sex, and race. It is produced by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and updated with more recent years than the 2019 published report.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in ESTIMATE of emergency department visits by AGE and YEAR_NUM.
• Compare visit rates (ESTIMATE per UNIT) between demographic groups using STUB_LABEL categories like sex and race.
• Model annual visit volumes (ESTIMATE) for different care settings (PANEL) as a time-series using YEAR.
• Assess data quality and statistical reliability by examining standard error (SE) and FLAG columns for specific estimates.

Strengths

• Data spans multiple years, with more recent data available than the 2019 report.
• Includes standard error (SE) and flag (FLAG) columns for assessing estimate reliability.
• Covers three distinct care settings (PANEL): physician offices, outpatient departments, and emergency departments.

Limitations

• Data for 2017 physician office visits are explicitly not available, creating a temporal gap.
• Sample size (row count) and total population coverage are unknown, limiting assessment of statistical power.
• Geographic coverage is limited to the United States, restricting international applicability.

Provenance

Source

National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) via data.cdc.gov.

Collection Method

Collected via the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey.

Time Range

Includes data from 2017-2019, with potentially more recent years.

Freshness

Last updated on platform in April 2025, though underlying survey data years are unspecified.

Geography

United States.