Description
For all persons, ERFEXTR captures the sum of direct payments made by TRICARE (formerly CHAMPUS) for hospital facility expenses associated with care provided during the year by emergency room medical providers. Refer to the comparability tab for information on how the specific sources of payment included in ERFEXTR change over time. Hospital facility expenses include direct hospital care, including room and board, diagnostic and laboratory work, x-rays, and similar expenses, as well as any physician services included in the hospital expense. Payments for over-the-counter drugs and indirect payments not related to specific medical events, such as Medicaid Disproportionate Share and Medicare Direct Medical Education subsidies, are not included in this amount. For more information on how MEPS collects expenditure data, please refer to our user note on medical expenditures.
Note that hospitals usually include expenses associated with emergency room visits that immediately result in an inpatient stay with the charges and payments for the inpatient stay. Therefore, to avoid the potential for double counting when imputing missing expenses, separately reported facility expenditures for emergency room visits that were identified in the Medical Provider Component (MPC) as directly linked to an inpatient stay were included as part of the inpatient stay only (see HPCHGTOT and HPFCHT). This strategy to avoid double counting resulted in $0 facility expenditures for these emergency room visits (but there still may be associated separately-billing doctor expenses). However, these $0 emergency room visits are still counted as separate visits in the utilization variable ERTOTVIS.
Variables related to total annual health care expenditures by source of payment, total annual health care expenditures by type of medical service, and total annual health care charges are also available. Please refer to our user note on expenditures for a list of these variables.
ERFEXTR is a 6-digit numeric variable.
Comparability
This variable is mostly comparable over time. Prior to 2009, ERFEXTR includes direct payments for health care from TRICARE, including CHAMPVA. Beginning in 2009, EREXPTRI excludes direct payments from CHAMPVA; instead, direct payments from CHAMPVA are included in ERFEXVA for 2009-forward.
Universe
- 2000-2022: All persons.
Availability
- 2000-2022
Weights
- 2000-2022 : PERWEIGHT
