Table 1.
Patient Demographics and Specialty Distribution of Outpatient Interactions, 2008–10.
| Outpatient Clinic Visits (N=648,200) |
Message Threads (N=83,912) |
P Value* | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gender | < 0.001 | ||
|
| |||
| Male | 323098 (49.8%) | 34678 (41.3%) | |
| Female | 325102 (50.2%) | 49234 (58.7%) | |
|
| |||
| Race | < 0.001 | ||
|
| |||
| African American | 72718 (11.2%) | 4499 (5.4%) | |
| American Indian/Eskimo | 1138 (0.2%) | 60 (<0.1%) | |
| Asian/Pac. Islander | 8334 (1.3%) | 338 (0.4%) | |
| Caucasian | 463181 (71.5%) | 72521 (86.4%) | |
| Hispanic/Latino | 16388 (2.5%) | 586 (0.7%) | |
| Unknown | 86441 (13.3%) | 5908 (6.1%) | |
|
| |||
| Age | < 0.001 | ||
|
| |||
| 47 (20, 62) | 52 (41, 60) | ||
|
| |||
| Specialty | < 0.001 | ||
|
| |||
| Cardiac Surgery | 64859 (10.0%) | 853 (1.0%) | |
| Colorectal Surgery | 11133 (1.7%) | 1260 (1.5%) | |
| General Surgery | 17228 (2.7%) | 8080 (9.6%) | |
| Heart/Lung Transplant | 2867 (0.4%) | 4904 (5.8%) | |
| Liver/Kidney/Pancreas Transplant | 5225 (0.8%) | 8057 (9.6%) | |
| Neurosurgery | 35293 (5.4%) | 5057 (6.0%) | |
| Oncologic Surgery | 12949 (2.0%) | 2601 (3.1%) | |
| Orthopedic Surgery/Podiatry | 183255 (28.3%) | 21099 (25.1%) | |
| Otolaryngology | 81537 (12.6%) | 16877 (20.1%) | |
| Pediatric General Surgery | 13634 (2.1%) | 179 (0.2%) | |
| Plastic Surgery | 103518 (16.0%) | 3006 (3.6%) | |
| Thoracic Surgery | 6509 (1.0%) | 756 (0.9%) | |
| Trauma | 10738 (1.7%) | 1426 (1.7%) | |
| Urology | 79507 (12.3%) | 9075 (10.8%) | |
| Vascular Surgery | 19948 (3.1%) | 680 (0.8%) | |
*
Significance testing was performed using chi-squared test for gender, race and specialty, and by Wilcoxon rank-sum test for age.