Handbook of Healthcare Analytics

10 Ambulatory Care

Nan Liu

Boston College

10.1 Introduction

Ambulatory care is defined as “medical services performed on an outpatient basis, without admission to a hospital or other facility” (The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, 2016). Ambulatory care is provided in a variety of settings, including, but not limited to, the offices of healthcare providers, hospital outpatient departments, outpatient surgical centers, diagnostic clinics, labs, dialysis clinics, and (freestanding) emergency departments. One unique feature of ambulatory care is that each episode of care consists of a single or multiple visits to a healthcare facility, and each of these visits last no more than one day.

Ambulatory care represents a large portion of the patient care delivered in the US. According to a 2013 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, there were 922.6 million ambulatory visits to nonfederal office‐based patient care physicians, excluding anesthesiologists, radiologists, and pathologists (US CDC, 2016). This is equivalent to about three visits per person per year. In 2011, there were 125.7 million visits to hospital outpatient departments (excluding emergency rooms); this is equivalent to 0.4 visits per person per year (US National Center for Health Statistics, 2016b). While no data seem to be available yet on the total expenditures of ambulatory care in the past few years in the US, a 2011 study estimates that ambulatory care (office‐based, hospital outpatient department, ...