A new Athenahealth study offers some startling insight into the effect the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has had on new patient visits: There isn't the surge industry professionals predicted.

According to Athenahealth's ACAView, which provides "timely, non-partisan measurement and analysis of how coverage expansion under the Affordable Care Act affects the day-to-day practice of medicine," there has been little change in the amount of new patient visits to primary care, pediatric, OB/GYN, surgery and "other" medical facilities.

Athenahealth's research was commissioned by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Because the company offers cloud-based services for medical providers, they were the primed for conducting the research based on their access. The study focused on roughly 14,300 doctors serving 5.8 million patients who saw over 12 million patient visits.