I’m looking at the number of inpatient, outpatient, and ER events linked to diabetes mellitus with complication (CCSR END003), and there are only 12 of those in the MEPS sample which seems extremely low given that complications are not rare in the population. For comparison, END002 (without complication) has over 700 linked inpatient, outpatient, and ER events in the MEPS sample. I looked at hospital visit counts from HCUP to see if this is mirrored there, but those rates are much more similar to each other and in fact there are more inpatient visits in NIS for END003 than END002 (other way around for ED, but still similar). Can see HCUPnet Data Tools – Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUPnet)
Does anyone know why the huge difference? I went back a couple of years of MEPS data and am getting similarly low counts for END003. Any insight would be appreciated!
Information on medical conditions in the MEPS is only reported if the condition is linked to a reported medical event or prescribed medicine during the calendar year. While there are some inpatient, outpatient, and ER events in the MEPS, the majority of reported medical events in the household survey data are either office-based medical provider visits (EVENTYPEJ = 1) or prescribed medicines (EVENTYPEJ = 8). For example, the 2022 MEPS only contains 2,433 records of hospital in-patient stays, compared with 159,729 office-based visits and 116,727 prescribed medicines. This significantly contrasts with the administrative data in HCUP, which has a strong emphasis on hospital usage.
While there are more reported inpatient stays for CCSR1 = END002 than for END003 (10 versus 0 in the 2022 MEPS), this is a relatively small sample size and may not be particularly informative of overall cases. If you’re looking to focus on these types of hospital-related medical events, the administrative data in HCUP will likely provide much greater precision.
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