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22 – Health Care Panel Surveys: Methodological Challenges Demonstrated Through the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey

Changes in Health Care Use Reporting in the 2nd vs. 1st Year: MEPS Household Component Overlapping Panel Design

at Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Household Component (MEPS-HC) is a nationally representative survey of the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population, conducted every year since 1996. The MEPS-HC is based on an overlapping panel design that collects data on healthcare utilization and costs for all persons in sampled households. Each participating household is targeted for interview 5 times, and the collected data cumulatively cover a two year period. Due to the amount of detailed information gathered during the interview, participants may 'learn' to avoid reporting medical events to reduce the burden of answering additional questions for each event. In this study, we examine whether evidence exists of this 'respondent fatigue' by analyzing trends in healthcare reporting. The overlapping panel design provides two avenues for this analysis. We first compare differences in event reporting for a calendar year between the 'new' panel in its first year of data collection with the 'old' panel in its second year of data collection. Second, within panels we compare event reporting in year 2 to expected levels based on health status characteristics in year 1.