Abstract Background Although many studies have modelled the national burdens of hospitalizations and deaths due to influenza, few studies have considered the outpatient burden. To fill this gap for the United States (US), we applied traditional statistical modelling approaches to time series derived from large medical claims databases held in the private sector. Methods We accessed ICD-9-coded office visit data extracted from Truven Health Analytics’ MarketScan Commercial database covering about one third of the US population