If you have recently visited your doctor, you probably went for a skin problem, back pain or joint disorder.
According to a Mayo Clinic study published Wednesday, these are the three leading reasons people visit their health care providers.
According to the study, one-fourth of Americans with chronic conditions account for about two-thirds of health-care costs in the U.S. Research into how to lower these costs tends to focus only on chronic conditions that have the highest rates of disability and death, for instance heart disease and diabetes, for example.
"To improve the health of a population - any population - it's really important to understand which diseases or conditions are actually occurring in the population to accurately target resources toward those areas," said lead author Jennifer St. Sauver, an associate professor of epidemiology at Mayo, in a video that accompanied the study's release.
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