Sample design of the 1996 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Medical Provider Component

摘要

The National Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) has been established to provide an assessment of the health care utilization, expenditures, health insurance coverage, and sources of payment for the civilian noninstitutionalized population. The 1996 MEPS sample consists of approximately 10,500 nationally representative households that were survey participants in the 1995 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). In the design of the survey, it was recognized that the household respondent was not always the best source of information on medical expenditures, particularly with the growth of managed care. Consequently, the MEPS includes a Medical Provider Survey Component (MPC), to improve the accuracy of the national estimates of health care expenditures that are derived from the survey. The sample design selectively targets those individuals that are most likely to misreport or not possess adequate knowledge about their medical expenditures, in addition to medical events that were expected to be associated with high levels of missing or poor quality data. In addition, the design was specified to enrich the sample of health care events available as donors for imputation, and to support methodological analysis. This paper provides a summary of the analytical objectives of the MPC, in addition to a detailed discussion of the survey design that was implemented.