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The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) offers practical, research-based tools and other resources to help a variety of health care organizations, providers and others make care safer in all health care settings.
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The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) is a set of large-scale surveys of families and individuals, their medical providers, and employers across the United States. MEPS is the most complete source of data on the cost and use of health care and health insurance coverage.
Health care costs (both charges and payments) are collected for all persons for each medical event they experience in the year, including the amount from each payment source. Charges are the dollar amounts asked ("charge") for a service by a health care provider. This is often different from the actual payments made to providers. Expenditure estimates are based on payments, not charges. More specifically, expenditures in MEPS are comprised of direct payments for care provided during the year, including out-of-pocket payments and payments by private insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, and other sources. In addition to the tables, query tool, and publications below, person-level and event-level data files with health care expenditure variables can be downloaded for analysis.
The public sources for health insurance identified in the MEPS include Medicare, TRICARE, Medicaid, SCHIP, and other public hospital/physician coverage. In addition to the tables and publications provided below, data files with annual and monthly insurance indicators, experience with public plans, and more can be downloaded for further analyses.
MEPSnet is a collection of analytical tools that operate on MEPS data in two categories: MEPSnet/Household Component provides easy access to nationally representative statistics of health care use, expenditures, sources of payment, and insurance coverage for the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population. MEPSnet/HC allows you to generate statistics using MEPS Household Component public use files. MEPSnet/Insurance Component provides easy access to national and state level statistics and trends about health insurance offered by private establishments and state and local governments. MEPSnet/IC guides you step-by-step in locating statistics of interest across all available years using data from the MEPS Insurance Component Summary Data Tables.
