Health care trends

Welcome to Health Care Trends. Produced by the American Medical Association (AMA) and drawn from an extensive review of professional, governmental and nongovernmental sources, this resource provides valuable information on the trends shaping medicine today. Health Care Trends is designed to stimulate thinking about how the direction of changes in medicine is influencing the delivery of patient care, and how physicians and medical associations might work together to positively shape tomorrow's health system. Let us know what you think—take our quick survey after you’ve downloaded this resource (available below in PDF format; requires Adobe® Reader®).

The publication is updated every two years, and the next update will be available in fall 2010.

Download the complete Health Care Trends 2008 (PDF, 2MB), or download by chapter: 

Demographics of the U.S. population
Page 1 (PDF, 195KB)

Health status of the population 
Page 7 (PDF, 259KB)

Health care resources 
Page 16 (PDF, 269KB)

Medical education
Page 24 (PDF, 267KB)

Health care expenditures 
Page 32 (PDF, 272KB)

Health care coverage and access 
Page 39 (PDF, 355KB)

Third-party payers 
Page 49 (PDF, 300KB)

Medical practice 
Page 56 (PDF, 296KB)

Quality measures 
Page 64 (PDF, 1MB)

Public health infrastructure and services 
Page 71 (PDF, 375KB)

Globalization 
Page 80 (PDF, 432KB)

Science and technology in medicine
Page 90 (PDF, 460KB)

Information and communication technologies 
Page 99 (PDF, 466KB)

Patient expectations and perceptions 
Page 107 (PDF, 465KB)

Take a quick survey about this resource. We welcome your feedback.