Title: |
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Medicare-MEPS Validation Study: A Comparison of Hospital and Physician Expenditures |
Description: |
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Medicare claims for a subset of beneficiaries in the 2001-2003 MEPS public use files have been used to evaluate the accuracy of survey-reported expenditures for hospital and physician care. Hospital and physician expenditures for these beneficiaries were under-reported by about 12 percent in all three years, but under-reporting varies considerably by event type. These findings are significant because they are for a large, although non-random, subset of a nationally representative survey, while most other studies of self-reporting accuracy have been for small, geographically limited samples. The findings may have applicability to other Medicare beneficiaries in MEPS. Medicare beneficiaries are responsible for a disproportionate share of health care spending in the US, and both previous studies and additional analyses in progress with these same data suggest that underreporting increases with the number of provider contacts. |
Author(s): |
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Gary Olin and Samuel Zuvekas and Virender Kumar and Pat Ward and Kitty Williams and Diana
Wobus |
Agency: |
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Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality |
540 Gaither Road Rockville, MD 20850