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APPENDIX C 61 MEDICAL EXPENDITURE PANEL SURVEY Design The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) is a redesign of the 1987 National Medical Expenditure Survey (NMES). Predecessor surveys to NMES were the 1981 National Medical Care Utilization and Expenditure Survey (NMCUES) and the 1977 National Medical Care Expenditure Survey (NMCES). The 1987 NMES consisted of five rounds of data collection between February 1987 and July 1988 for a sample of 14,000 households, including oversamples of blacks, Hispanics, people aged 65 and older, low-income people, and people with functional limitations. Surveys were also conducted of physicians and health care facilities providing care to members of the household sample during 1987 and of employers and insurance companies responsible for their insurance coverage. The NMES also included an institutional survey of 13,000 residents of nursing and personal care homes, psychiatric hospitals, and facilities for the mentally retarded. MEPS is a continuing panel survey, begun in 1996. It follows samples of households in 5 personal interviews and 1 telephone interview over almost 30 months, with a new panel introduced every year. The 1996 sample is 10,500 households. The sample was drawn from the 1995 National Health Interview Survey sample, making it possible to integrate the NHIS data with MEPS data for MEPS sample households. MEPS also includes surveys of providers, employers, and insurance companies of household sample members, as well as a nursing home survey. The MEPS provider survey includes hospitals, physicians, and home health care providers and obtains information to supplement responses to the MEPS household survey, including information to help estimate medical care expenses of people enrolled in health maintenance organizations and other types of managed care plans. The MEPS health insurance provider survey includes employers, unions, and private insurance companies and obtains detailed information on the health insurance plans of MEPS respondents and other health plans available to, but not chosen by, respondents. The employer component uses the same questionnaire as that used for the National Employer Health Interview Survey, which is a large annual survey of employers about their health insurance plans, beginning in 1997. (NEHIS was first conducted in 1994.) The MEPS national nursing home expenditure survey gathers information from a sample of 800 nursing homes and more than 5,000 residents on the characteristics of the facilities and services offered, expenditures and sources of payment on an individual resident level, and resident characteristics, including functional limitation, cognitive impairment, age, income, and insurance coverage. The survey also collects data on the availability and use of community-based care prior to admission to nursing homes. Content (1996 MEPS Household Survey; Summary Description) Family Demographic Characteristics Age Sex Race/ethnicity Family relationship Marital status Military status Education
