Data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey

Diabetes is a chronic condition which affects nearly 29 million Americans and is a major cause of other chronic conditions, including heart disease, eye disease, and stroke (1). Diabetes was the seventh leading U.S. cause of death in 2009 and 2010 (2,3). Management of diabetes costs nearly $245 billion annually, and patients with diabetes have medical expenditures approximately 2.3 times higher than those for patients without diabetes (4). This data brief shows the trend from 2005 through 2010 for visits to office-based physicians by patients with diabetes, and describes age differences in the utilization of health care by patients with diabetes in 2010