Dec 14 -- The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) invites public comments to OMB by February 12, 2024 regarding the proposed revision of the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey (MEPS)—Household and Medical Provider Components. [Comments due 30 days after submission to OMB on January 12.]
AHRQ requests that OMB approve a change to AHRQ's collection of information for the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey—Household and Medical Provider Components: OMB Control number 0935–0118, expiration November 30, 2025. 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.
This research has the following 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 Fall 2024 MEPS–HC:
• Core MEPS Interview—Seven economic burden questions will be added to the Core interview. Five of these questions come from the Preventive Care Services Self-Administered Questionnaire (PSAQ), and two are new to the MEPS. The specific topics of the five questions moving from the PSAQ are partial and late payments for bills, having been contacted by debt collection agencies, and ability to pay for unexpected expenses. The questions were modified to be asked at the household level. These topics are important for understanding the context families face in paying for health care. The new questions asking about medical debt are modified versions of questions used in the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). The SIPP asks the question at a person level; AHRQ has modified it to be asked at the household level. Collecting medical debt amounts will enable analyses of how medical debt is related to health care access, use, health outcomes, and financial status. In addition, the wording for eight food security questions has been slightly modified to allow for proxy responses; thus, all households will be asked these questions.
• Preventive Care Services Self-Administered Questionnaire (PSAQ)—The PSAQ will have the following changes for Fall 2024:
-- Removing five economic burden questions, which will be added to the Core interview;
-- Combining the Male and Female PSAQ questionnaires into a single questionnaire and revising the sex-specific questions accordingly;
-- Adding Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) questions to the end of the questionnaire;
-- Changing the age-specific skips to reflect new recommendations for specific preventive health screening procedures;
-- Creating a web-based mode of completion as an alternative option to the traditional pen-and-paper-based survey.
The incorporation of SOGI questions into the PSAQ aligns with the objectives outlined in Executive Order 14075, titled “Advancing Equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Individuals.” The inclusion of these questions necessitated further adjustments to the questionnaires, including the consolidation of the traditionally segregated male and female questionnaires into a unified form. Optimally incorporating sex-specific preventive care questions (e.g., prostate cancer screening) in surveys in a manner that respects all gender identities requires balancing multiple competing factors. AHRQ consulted with federal agencies fielding surveys with SOGI and preventive care questions, and they have not yet modified their preventive care questions to account for gender minorities. For this initial attempt in the MEPS, AHRQ balanced the following considerations: respect for gender minority respondents, cognitive burden among cisgender respondents, minimizing skip patterns to maintain consistency between pen-and-paper and web-based modes of the PSAQ, and the strong expectation that the number of gender minority respondents in the relevant age ranges will be too small to support estimates of receipt of sex-specific preventive services in this population. AHRQ will continue to monitor best practices and empirical studies by consulting with NCHS and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to revise the PSAQ when it is fielded again in the future.
• Cancer Self-Administered Questionnaire (Cancer SAQ)—The NCI has collaborated in previous years with AHRQ to create the MEPS Experiences with Cancer Supplement, which oversampled households with cancer survivors from the prior year National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and fielded a special survey about economic burden and access to care in cancer survivors. Due to a change in the NHIS sample design, MEPS will not be able to oversample cancer survivors in the 2024 data collection. The current effort will field an updated version of the MEPS Experiences with Cancer Survey in the Fall 2024 MEPS–HC. The new version of the survey will include most of the same questions as the earlier survey to allow comparisons of trends and will replace some survey items that are now less critical or available from other data sources with new questions on employment impacts and workplace accommodations; survivorship care; social determinants of health; and social isolation and support.
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-HC:
https://meps.ahrq.gov/survey_comp/household.jsp
MEPS-MPC:
https://meps.ahrq.gov/survey_comp/mpc.jsp
AHRQ submission to OMB:
https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAViewICR?ref_nbr=202401-0935-001 Click IC List for information collection instrument, View Supporting Statement for technical documentation. Submit comments through this webpage.
FRN:
https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2023-27462
For AEA members wishing to submit comments, "A Primer on How to Respond to Calls for Comment on Federal Data Collections" is available at
https://www.aeaweb.org/content/file?id=5806