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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Results from a new survey reveal 63.5 million adults in the United States visited a doctor for a preventive health or preventive gynecological exam every year between 2002 and 2004. The annual cost: $7.8 billion.
Leading the study were researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, who write, Preventive health examinations are controversial and limited data are available on their use and content. They set out to determine how many people use preventive health services, which types of physicians are seen for preventive services and how much those services cost.
For the study, researchers analyzed data from a survey of office-based physicians. Physicians were randomly picked to complete a form that listed visits with each of 30 randomly selected patients during an assigned reporting week.
Results show there were 181,173 outpatient visits in the three-year study and 5,387 of those were preventive health exams. Just over 3,000 were preventive gynecological exams. Researchers say this equates to about 21 percent of the U.S. population receiving preventive health exams. And about 19 million women -- or 17.7 percent -- receive preventive gynecological exams every year.
Researchers found people in the Northeast were 60-percent more likely to receive a preventive health exam than those in the West. Also, people who are uninsured are half as likely to get a preventive health exam as those who are insured.
Study authors write, Preventive health examinations and preventive gynecological examinations are among the most common reasons adults see a physician. These visits frequently include preventive services, but most preventive services are provided at other visits. These findings provide a foundation for continuing national deliberations about the use and content of preventive health examinations and preventive gynecological examinations. They continue, Despite the controversy over their value, these findings highlight the significant role that preventive health examinations and preventive gynecological examinations play in the [United States] health care system.
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, which offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, click on: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, 2007;167:1876-1883
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