U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ); and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
MEPS comprises three component surveys: the Household Component (HC), the Medical Provider Component (MPC), and the Insurance Component (IC). The MEPS Household Component (HC), the core survey, is an interviewer administered CAPI (Computer Assisted Personal Interview) household survey. The data for this report are primarily from the following sections of the 2001 MEPS HC:
an adult Self-Administered Questionnaire (SAQ)
This self-administered paper questionnaire collected a variety of health and health care quality measures of adults. The health care quality measures in the SAQ were taken from the health plan version of CAHPS®, an AHRQ sponsored family of survey instruments designed to measure quality of care from the consumer's perspective.
Diabetes Care Survey (DCS)
This was another self-administered paper questionnaire given out to persons identified as ever having had diabetes and asks about their diabetes care.
Child Health and Preventive Care (CHPR) section
Starting in 2001, a Child Health and Preventive Care section was added to the MEPS-HC interviews during the second half of the year. It included: health care quality measures taken from the health plan version of CAHPS®; the Children with Special Health Care Needs Screener questions; children's general health status as measured by several questions from the General Health Subscale of the Child Health Questionnaire; Columbia Impairment Scale questions about possible child behavioral problems; and child preventive-care questions. The CAHPS® questions and the Children with Special Health Care Needs Screener questions had been in a Parent Administered paper Questionnaire (PAQ) in 2000. The PAQ estimates for 2000 may not be completely comparable to the CHPR estimates in later years due to differences in the administration of the PAQ and the CHPR section (parent self-administered paper questionnaire for the PAQ vs. interviewer-administered in-person household interview of household respondent for the CHPR).
Access to Care (AC)
The AC section of the MEPS-HC gathers information on five main topic areas: family members' origins and preferred languages; family members' usual source of health care; characteristics of usual source of health care providers; satisfaction with and access to the usual source of health care provider; and access to medical treatment, dental treatment, and prescription medicines.
Preventive Care (PC)
For each person, a series of questions was asked primarily about the receipt of preventive care or screening examinations.
The sampling frame for the MEPS HC is drawn from respondents to NHIS, conducted by NCHS. NHIS provides a nationally representative sample of the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population, with oversampling of Hispanics and Blacks. The MEPS HC augments NHIS by selecting a sample of NHIS respondents, collecting additional data on their health care expenditures, and linking these data with additional information from the respondents' medical providers, employers, and insurance providers.
The MEPS HC collects detailed data on demographic characteristics, health conditions, health status, use of medical care services, payments, access to care, satisfaction with care, health insurance coverage, income, and employment.
The MEPS HC is a nationally representative survey of the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population.
The MEPS HC collects data on demographic characteristics including: Age, gender, race, ethnicity, education, industry and occupation, employment status, household composition, and family income. Race and ethnicity variables and categories changed in 2002 to be compliant with OMB standards that required changes by 2003.
1996 to present.
Annual.
National. The HC data also can be shown for the four Census regions (Northeast, Midwest, South, and West) and according to MSA status.
AHRQ fields a new MEPS panel each year. In this design, two calendar years of information are collected from each household in a series of five rounds of data collection over a 2 1/2-year period. These data are then linked with additional information collected from the respondents' medical providers, employers, and insurance providers. This series of data collection activities is repeated each year on a new sample of households, resulting in overlapping panels of survey data.
Agency homepage: http://www.ahrq.gov
Data system homepage: http://www.meps.ahrq.gov
Cohen, J. Design and Methods of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Household Component. MEPS Methodology Report No. 1. AHCPR Pub. No. 97-0026. Rockville, MD: AHCPR, 1997.
Cohen, S. Sample Design of the 1996 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Household Component. MEPS Methodology Report No. 2. AHCPR Pub. No. 97-0027. Rockville, MD: AHCPR, 1997.
Cohen, J.W.; Monheit, A.C.; Beauregard, K.M.; et al. The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey: A National Health Information Resource. Inquiry 33:373-389, 1996/1997. Also available as AHCPR Pub. No. 97-R043. Washington, DC: AHCPR, 1997.