Apr 19 -- The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), HHS, invites comments by June 18, 2024 regarding the proposed revision of Medical Expenditures Panel Survey—Household and Medical Provider Components.
AHRQ requests that OMB approve a revision to AHRQ's collection of information for the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey—Household and Medical Provider Components. Requested changes are for the Household Component (MEPS-HC) only.
The MEPS was initiated in 1996. Each year a new panel of sample households is selected. Recent annual MEPS-HC sample sizes average about 13,500 households. Data can be analyzed at either the person, family, or event level. The panel design of the survey, which includes 5 rounds of interviews covering 2 full calendar years, provides data for examining person level changes in selected variables such as expenditures, health insurance coverage, and health status.
Research Goals:
(1) To produce nationally representative estimates of health care use, expenditures, sources of payment, and health insurance coverage for the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population.
(2) To produce nationally representative estimates of respondents' health status, demographic and socio-economic characteristics, employment, access to care, and satisfaction with health care.
Proposed Changes for the 2025 MEPS-HC
• Core MEPS Interview and Adult SAQ—The Core interview and the Adult Self-Administered Questionnaire (SAQ) include four questions from the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems 5.0 (CAHPS 5.0). These questions will have wording changes to update them to CAHPS 5.1. These wording changes will help identify telehealth utilization and access, as well as maintain consistency between CAHPS and MEPS-HC questionnaire items. Below are the four questions, both the current version and the proposed version:
Current: In the last 12 months, did {you/{PERSON}} have an illness, injury or condition that needed care right away in a clinic, emergency room, or doctor's office?
Proposed: In the last 12 months, did {you/{PERSON}} have an illness, injury, or condition that needed care right away?
Current: In the last 12 months, did you make any appointments for a check-up or routine care for {yourself/{PERSON}} at a doctor's office or clinic?
Proposed: In the last 12 months, did you make any in-person, phone, or video appointments for a check-up or routine care for {yourself/{PERSON}}?
Current: Looking at card CS-2, in the last 12 months, how often did you get an appointment for a check-up or routine care for {yourself/{PERSON}} at a doctor's office or clinic as soon as {you/he/she} needed?
Proposed: Looking at card CS-2, in the last 12 months, how often did you get an appointment for a check-up or routine care for {yourself/{PERSON}} as soon as {you/he/she} needed?
Current: Looking at card CS-3, in the last 12 months, not counting times {you/{PERSON}} went to an emergency room, how many times did {you/he/she} go to a doctor's office or clinic to get health care?
Proposed: Looking at card CS-3, in the last 12 months, not counting the times {you/{PERSON}} went to an emergency room, how many times did {you/he/she} get health care in person, by phone, or by video?
• Burdens and Economic Impacts of Medical Care Self-Administered Questionnaire (ESAQ)—The Office of the Secretary—Patient Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund is funding this SAQ to expand the collection of economic outcomes data for patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) via the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS).
The ESAQ will be completed during Round 3, Panel 30 and Round 5, Panel 29 (Spring 2025) by adult household members (aged 18 and over). The ESAQ will be administered in a mixed-mode of paper and online. Respondents will be offered a $20.00 monetary incentive to complete the ESAQ. This is a one-time data collection and the ESAQ will be removed from the MEPS after the 2025 fielding. The goal of the ESAQ is to enhance the MEPS data by adding new domains related to the economic burdens of seeking and receiving health care, to study economic outcomes in patient-centered outcomes research.
There is no other survey that is now or has been recently conducted that will meet the objectives of the ESAQ. The ESAQ will supplement MEPS data on direct care expenditures with data on major indirect costs, including time costs of getting care and administrative hassles; lost work productivity due to presenteeism, lost productivity in non-market activities, and time costs of informal care. With this new data, researchers will be able to better examine health care economic burdens and equity in health care access, utilization, and outcomes, for example to aggregate social costs of health care and poor health, examine indirect costs associated with common conditions, and analyze disparities and equity in indirect costs.
In developing the ESAQ, AHRQ consulted with several experts in the area and used their expertise to identify priority topics and questions that have already been tested and widely accepted. Nearly all items are either from Federal surveys, federally funded surveys, or adapted from instruments that have been carefully validated. Two questions related to affordability and access are from Kaiser Family Foundation surveys. One question about informal care was cognitively tested in a prior question development project. One question on the high-priority topic of administrative hassles of health insurance was developed from phrases from the carefully tested and widely accepted Consumer Assessment of Health Plans and Systems.
• Cancer Self-Administered Questionnaire (CSAQ)—The CSAQ will be removed from the 2025 MEPS-HC.
This study is being conducted by AHRQ through its contractor, Westat, pursuant to AHRQ's statutory authority to conduct and support research on healthcare and on systems for the delivery of such care, including activities with respect to the cost and use of health care services and with respect to health statistics and surveys. 42 U.S.C. 299a(a)(3) and (8); 42 U.S.C. 299b-2.
The MEPS-HC uses a combination of computer assisted personal interviewing (CAPI), computer assisted video interviewing (CAVI), and self-administered paper and web questionnaires, to collect information about each household member, and the survey builds on this information from interview to interview. CAVI is a new data collection technology and offers the best of both telephone and in-person interviewing, while offering opportunities for cost savings and more accurate reporting.
MEPS:
https://meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/
FRN:
https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-08431