Description
For emergency room, inpatient hospitalizations, and outpatient events (EVENTYPE), EVEXPOPUDR captures the direct payments made by other public insurance sources to separately billing doctors for care provided during the event. 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 2000-2017, outpatient events are not in universe if the visit was a telephone call (SEETLKPV). For more information on how MEPS collects expenditure data, please refer to our user note on medical expenditures.
IPUMS MEPS reports the universe for each variable based on a thorough review of the original MEPS documentation. Investigating the data may reveal cases that do not meet the stated universe. Users are encouraged to validate universes for their analyses.
The sum of EVEXPOPUDR and EVEXPOPUFAC (available for emergency room visits, inpatient hospitalization stays, and outpatient visits event types) is equivalent to EVEXPOPU (available for dental, other medical, office-based and home health event types).
AHRQ staff advise users to exercise caution when interpreting the expenditures recorded in EVEXPOPUDR. While these payments stem from apparent inconsistent responses to the health insurance and source of payment questions in the survey, some of these inconsistencies may have logical explanations. For example, some of the "other public" payments may stem from confusion between Medicaid and other state and local programs or may be for persons who were not enrolled in Medicaid, but were presumed eligible by a provider who ultimately received payments from the program.
EVEXPOPUDR is on the event record (see RECTYPE for more details on the different record types in IPUMS MEPS). Variables offered on the event record through IPUMS MEPS are derived from the dental visits, other medical expenses, hospital inpatient stays, emergency room visits, outpatient visits, office-based medical provider visits, and home health event files provided by AHRQ. Please see our overview of the event, medical conditions, and prescribed medicines variables, including how those variables are offered through IPUMS MEPS, and general considerations to keep in mind when conducting analyses using these variables.
EVEXPOPUDR is a 10-digit numeric variable with 2 implied decimal places. That is, values of 1234567890 should be interpreted as 12,345,678.90. The command files delivered with IPUMS extracts automatically divide by 100, so no further adjustment is needed.
99999999.99: Not in Universe
Availability
- 1996-2018
Weights
- 1996-2018 : PERWEIGHT
