Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Home

Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Home

What's New Highlights

New Publications Statistical Brief 530: Trends in Health Insurance at Private Employers, 2008-2019 discusses the 2019 national survey estimates and also examines changes in the survey estimates over the years 2008-2019. In addition to statistics for all private-sector employers, it considers results for small, medium, and large employers. New Data Files The MEPS HC-206G: 2018 Office-Based Medical Provider Visits File provides detailed information on office-based medical provider visits. Data are gathered from a nationally representative sample of the civilian, noninstitutionalized population of the United States and can be used to make estimates of office-based medical provider utilizations and expenditures for calendar year 2018. New Data Files The MEPS HC-206F: 2018 Outpatient Visits File provides detailed information on outpatient visits. Data are gathered from a nationally representative sample of the civilian, noninstitutionalized population of the United States and can be used to make estimates of outpatient utilizations and expenditures for calendar year 2018. New Data Files The MEPS HC-206E: 2018 Emergency Room Visits File provides detailed information on emergency room visits. Data are gathered from a nationally representative sample of the civilian, noninstitutionalized population of the United States and can be used to make estimates of emergency room utilizations and expenditures for calendar year 2018. New Data Files The MEPS HC-206D: 2018 Hospital Inpatient Stays File provides detailed information on hospital inpatient stays. Data are gathered from a nationally representative sample of the civilian, noninstitutionalized population of the United States and can be used to make estimates of inpatient hospital stay utilizations and expenditures for calendar year 2018. New Publications Working Paper 20001: Undercounting of Healthcare Utilization in the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Household-reported medical events in the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) may be undercounted. This working paper explores whether person characteristics or aspects of the interview such as use of memory aids are correlated with misreporting among respondents. Multivariate analyses are used to isolate the characteristics associated with misreporting while controlling for other covariates. In addition, the paper assesses whether machine learning algorithms can accurately predict whether a household was likely to overreport or underreport events, as well as to predict the number of events reported in the MEPS Medical Provider Component (MPC). The computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI) instrument used for MEPS household data collection was redesigned in 2018 in an effort to improve user experience for MEPS respondents and thus the quality of the collected data. The methods outlined in this paper could be used as a baseline for comparing reporting accuracy before and after the CAPI redesign, to help assess the success of the survey redesign in improving the collection of household-reported events.