Medical Event Reporting in the 2005 to 2013 MEPS in Terms of Self and Proxy Reporting According to the Person's Relationship to the Respondent

• Activity Number: 661
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 4, 2016 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Frances Chevarley* and Karen Davis
• Companies: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
• Keywords: Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) ; Household survey ; Health Care Utilization ; Proxy

Abstract

This paper analyzes medical event estimates in the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) in an effort to understand event reporting behaviors. MEPS is a nationally representative panel survey studying health care use, access, expenditures, source of payment, insurance coverage, and quality of care. Each year a new panel begins and each panel has 5 rounds of data collection over 2 ½ years that cover a two-year reference period. To understand medical event reporting behaviors of self vs. proxy reporting, we analyzed trends from 2005 to 2013 in reported utilization for the respondent and for other members of each responding unit (RU) in terms of the other members' relationships to the RU respondent. We also looked at these trends in reported utilization by the number of persons in the RU. The type of events analyzed were ambulatory visits and purchased prescriptions. During the period 2005 to 2013, our data suggests declines in the percent of persons with, or, average number of events per person for certain relationships to the respondent in certain sized RUs for ambulatory visits and/or purchased prescriptions.