Definition of Expenditures. Expenditures on this file refer to what is paid for health care services. More specifically, expenditures in MEPS are defined as the sum of payments for care received, including out-of- pocket payments and payments made by private insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, and other sources. The definition of expenditures used in MEPS differs slightly from its predecessors, the 1987 NMES and 1977 NMCES surveys, where “charges” rather than “sum of payments” were used to measure expenditures. This change was adopted because charges became a less appropriate proxy for medical expenditures during the 1990s because of the increasingly common practice of discounting charges. Although measuring expenditures as the sum of payments incorporates discounts in the MEPS expenditure estimates, the estimates do not incorporate any manufacturer or other rebates associated with Medicaid or other purchases. Another general change from the two prior surveys is that charges associated with uncollected liability, bad debt, and charitable care (unless provided by a public clinic or hospital) are not counted as expenditures, because there are no payments associated with those classifications. For details on expenditure definitions, please reference the following, “Informing American Health Care Policy” (Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxx, Xxxxxx, 1999). If examining trends in MEPS expenditures or performing longitudinal analysis on MEPS expenditures please refer to Section C, sub-sections 3.4 and 6.3 respectively for more information.
Definition of Expenditures. Expenditures on Files 1 and 2 refer to what is paid for health care services. More specifically, expenditures in MEPS are defined as the sum of payments for care received for each emergency room visit, including out-of-pocket payments and payments made by private insurance, Medicaid, Medicare and other sources. The definition of expenditures used in MEPS differs slightly from its predecessors: the 1987 NMES and 1977 NMCES surveys where “charges” rather than sum of payments were used to measure expenditures. This change was adopted because charges became a less appropriate proxy for medical expenditures during the 1990's due to the increasingly common practice of discounting. Although measuring expenditures as the sum of payments incorporates discounts in the MEPS expenditure estimates, the estimates do not incorporate any payment not directly tied to specific medical care visits, such as bonuses or retrospective payment adjustments by third party payers. Another general change from the two prior surveys is that charges associated with uncollected liability, bad debt, and charitable care (unless provided by a public clinic or hospital) are not counted as expenditures because there are no payments associated with those classifications. While charge data are provided on this file, data users/analysts should use caution when working with this data because a charge does not typically represent actual dollars exchanged for services or the resource costs of those services; nor are they directly comparable to the expenditures defined in the 1987 NMES. For details on expenditure definitions, please reference the following, “Informing American Health Care Policy” (Monheit et al., 1999). Expenditure data related to emergency room visits are broken out by facility and separately billing doctor expenditures. This file contains five categories of expenditure variables per visit: basic hospital emergency room facility expenses; expenses for doctors who billed separately from the hospital for any emergency room services provided during emergency room visit; total expenses, which is the sum of the facility and physician expenses; facility total charge; and physician total charge.
Definition of Expenditures. EXPENDITURES" referred to herein shall include the following:
