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Abstract #147748

Steven Machlin, MS, Center for Financing, Access, and Cost Trends, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 540 Gaither Road, Rockville, MD 20850, Karen M. Beauregard, MHA, Center for Financing, Access and Cost Trends, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 540 Gaither Rd, Rockville, MD 20850, 301-427-1679, kbeaureg@ahrq.gov, and Joel Cohen, PhD, Center for Financing, Access and Cost Trends, AHRQ, 540 Gaither Road, Rockville, MD 20852.

The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) is a unique data source that can be used to produce national estimates and analyses of health care utilization and expenditures associated with specific medical conditions. Information on medical conditions is collected from respondents to the Household Component (HC) of the survey and can be tied to specific ambulatory and inpatient medical events that are also reported in the HC. The MEPS Medical Provider Component (MPC) provides a unique opportunity to assess the quality of data reported in a household survey on medical conditions. While the primary purpose of the MPC is to collect medical expenditure data from providers to improve the completeness and accuracy of HC expense information, data are also collected in the MPC on medical conditions treated. These data will often be more accurate and complete than the HC data because they reflect medical diagnoses by health care providers rather than reports from survey respondents (i.e., the patient themselves or a family member). Using matched HC-MPC data for medical care reported in MEPS, we assess the extent to which medical conditions reported in the HC are corroborated by data reported in the MPC. We examine consistency between the two sources for broad groupings of condition type and for acute versus chronic conditions. The results will help inform whether and the extent to which there may be misclassification bias in analyses that rely on household reported medical condition data.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe procedures for collecting medical condition information in the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey.
• Evaluate quality of household reported data for selected medical conditions.
• Discuss advantages and disadvantages of MEPS household reported medical condition data for behavioral and socioeconomic analyses.

Keywords: Methodology, Disease Data

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No
Any institutionally-contracted trials related to this submission?

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.