AHRQ Awards MEPS-HC to Westat

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has awarded the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Household Component (MEPS-HC) to Westat. MEPS data products and analysis constitute the nation’s most complete source of data on the cost and use of health care and health insurance coverage and are widely considered the gold standard of data on U.S. health care utilization and expenditures.

Westat has conducted the MEPS-HC under seven contracts since it began in 1996 and will continue this partnership with AHRQ, a relationship marked by transparent communication, broad experience with MEPS, and a culture of collaboration and responsiveness. Westat provides deep expertise in safeguarding quality over the survey’s nearly three decades of complex longitudinal data collection while introducing innovations designed to improve the quality and utility of the MEPS data.

In Westat, AHRQ recognizes an industry leader in methods and technology that can support this mission effectively and efficiently; meet the complex demands, rigorous schedule, and extremely high-quality standards; is flexible enough to implement AHRQ’s requirements under adverse conditions and be responsive to the rapidly changing data collection environment as it did during the pandemic; and is recognized for its commitment to meet the challenging operational requirements and deliver the data, including restricted-use and public-use data.

Examples to date of the size, scope, and complexity of Westat’s work on MEPS include the following:

• Over 27 years, Westat has conducted approximately 850,000 MEPS interviews and trained around 4,000 field interviewers.
• Each year, Westat conducts 30,000-35,000 interviews with around 14,000 households and collects approximately 50,000 medical provider authorization forms and self-administered questionnaires.
• Westat updates the computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) instrument twice a year, tracking the impact of proposed updates on downstream tasks, such as interviewer training, data collection, inter-round processing, data editing, variable construction, and data delivery.
• Data collection is nearly continuous, with only weeks between field periods. Westat processes completed cases overnight to validate interviews, identify households where family members have moved for follow-up, and prepare cases for the next interview.
• Each year, Westat delivers more than 100 restricted-use files and public-use files. The process uses nearly 2,500 SAS programs, 128 SAS macros, and 4,300 SQL programs.
• Westat maintains an Authorization to Operate (ATO) for a moderate-level system.
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, Westat rapidly switched operations from in-person to telephone interviewing and extended two panels to nine rounds covering four calendar years, quickly updating the CAPI instrument to stay on schedule. MEPS was able to remain in the field when many other national surveys were put on hold.
• Growing out of the pandemic, Westat pioneered a new data collection mode, video interviewing. Today more than 20% of MEPS household interviews are conducted by Zoom, reducing cost and respondent burden.

“We look forward to continued collaboration with AHRQ analysts and program managers and to develop solutions that move MEPS forward to improve and modernize the project, while staying clearly focused on AHRQ’s mission and needs,” notes Jacqueline Hogan, Westat Vice President and Practice Director of the Large Surveys Practice. “In Westat, AHRQ has a proven partner that has demonstrated innovation in virtually every area of MEPS-HC.”