MPC Data Collection Schedule

The annual expenditure estimates generated from MEPS are derived from a union of the data collected from household and medical provider respondents. The data in a given year’s estimates relate to the year in which the data were collected from household respondents. Because the MPC sample is identified during household data collection, medical provider data collection necessarily follows household data collection, and the MPC sample cannot be fully identified until all household interviewing for the target calendar year is complete (the June following the end of the target year).

A major goal of the survey is to make the MEPS data available to users on as timely a basis as possible. By design, the MPC trails household interviewing. It provides the last elements of data content for the annual estimates, and the major processes required to prepare the annual estimates cannot begin until the MPC data collection is complete. Achieving the data delivery goal thus requires that the MPC data collection be started and completed as quickly as possible following household interviewing.

The schedule for fielding the MPC sample is shaped by the data delivery goal in several ways. The MPC sample for a given year is fielded in two or more waves, with the first wave beginning while household interviewing for the data year is still in progress. A first wave of the MPC sample is drawn from the first two rounds of household data collection for the calendar year—from Rounds 1 and 2 of the panel completing its first year and from Rounds 3 and 4 of the panel in its second year. These rounds end by mid-December. The final wave of the MPC sample can be fielded only after the household rounds that close out the calendar year data collection—Round 3 of the panel in its first year and Round 5 of the panel completing its second year—have been completed, which occurs in June. Readying these last elements of the year’s MPC sample for data collection is critical to the overall MPC data collection schedule.

A minimum of 12 to 14 weeks is needed to build an acceptable response rate for this final part of the sample. The availability of this sample thus sets a minimum bound on how quickly the MPC data collection can end and the MPC data can be made available for processing. In recent years, the project has made steady incremental progress in reducing the processing time required to field each wave of the sample at the start of data collection operations and in making the MPC data available for processing at the end of data collection.

Table 3-2 summarizes the schedule for MPC data collection for calendar years 2004 through 2006. As reflected in the table, the sample is fielded in three groups with hospitals, office-based physicians, and home care, institutional, and HMO providers fielded as one group and SBD and pharmacy providers fielded as separate groups. For each of the main elements of the data collection, the table shows the start of the first wave of MPC data collection, the end of the final round of household data collection that generated the sample for the year’s MPC, the start of the last wave of MPC data collection, the end of the MPC data collection, and the number of waves in which the year’s MPC sample was fielded.

Schedule for MPC data collection, 2004-2006

* Includes hospitals, office-based physicians, and home care, institutional, and HMO providers.