Major diagnoses for office visits to ophthalmologists and optometrists in the medicare population

Purpose: To examine the diagnoses for which Medicare patients are seen by ophthalmologists and optometrists. Methods: We analyzed Medicare Part B claims data (1993) on a 5% random sample of the Medicare population. We specifically examined clinical diagnoses related to office visits (CPT codes: 90024-92499) rendered by ophthalmologists and optometrists. The diagnosis for each visit was defined by ICD-9 codes provided by physicians. Numbers of visits captured in the sample were projected to the entire Medicare population. The differences between groups were tested using the χ² test. Results: During 1993, 19,331, 460 office visits were identified to be rendered by ophthalmologists and optometrists. Of those, 15,989,080 (83%) were made to ophthalmologists and 3,342,380 (17%) to optometrists. The patterns of major diagnoses are listed in the table. Cataract attributed to 30% and 47%, while glaucoma attributed to 26% and 13% of office visits to ophthalmologists and optometrists respectively (p