Assessing the Accuracy of Prescription Drug Data for Medicare Beneficiaries in the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey

• Activity Number: 292
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 3, 2010 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Health Policy Statistics Section
• Author(s): Marc Zodet*+ and Samuel Zuvekas and Steven Hill and Edward Miller
• Companies: AHRQ and AHRQ and AHRQ and AHRQ
• Keywords: prescription drug data ; MEPS ; administrative data ; Medicare

Abstract

The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) has detailed information on prescription drug use and expenditures for a nationally representative sample of the U.S. civilian, noninstitutionalized population. The data are collected from both household respondents and pharmacies. We evaluate drug use reported by household respondents and expenditures reported by pharmacies using a linked sample of 1,815 Medicare beneficiaries in MEPS and their Medicare administrative data. Our analyses assess the concordance between (1) the number of drugs and prescription drug fills reported by the household in MEPS versus the numbers in the administrative data, and (2) the out-of-pocket and Medicare expenditures reported by pharmacies in MEPS versus expenditures in Medicare claims.