Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Public Use File Details

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MEPS HC-231: 2021 Medical Conditions File

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Release date: August 2023

	Notes on viewing and downloading files
	Printing tips

Released as an ASCII file (with related SAS, SPSS, STATA, and R programming statements) and in a SAS transport file, a SAS V9 file, a XLSX file, and a Stata file, the 2021 Medical Conditions File is one in a series of public use data files drawn from the 2021 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) Household Component (HC). It provides information on household-reported medical conditions collected from a nationally representative sample of the civilian noninstitutionalized population of the United States for calendar year 2021. Each record represents one current medical condition reported for a person during the 2021 portion of Round 7, and all of Rounds 8 and 9 for Panel 23; the 2021 portion of Rounds 5 and 7, and all of Round 6 for Panel 24; the 2021 portion of Round 3 and all of Rounds 4 and 5 for Panel 25; and Rounds 1, 2, and the 2021 portion of Round 3 for Panel 26 (i.e., the rounds for the MEPS panels covering the calendar year 2021). This year, 2021, is the first data year to include four panels of data. Because of concerns about lower response rates due to COVID-19, Panels 23 and 24 were extended to include 9 rounds of data collection; data for Rounds 7, 8, and 9 for Panel 23 and Rounds 5, 6, and 7 for Panel 24 are included in the 2021 data files. Person-level data (e.g., demographic or health insurance characteristics) from the 2021 MEPS Full-Year Consolidated File (HC-233) can be merged to the records in this file using the DUPERSID variable. Data from this file also can be merged to the 2021 MEPS Event Files (HC-229A, and HC-229D through HC-229H) by using the link files provided in the 2021 MEPS Appendix File (HC-229I). For more details on loading MEPS PUFs into R, SAS, and Stata, please visit the MEPS GitHub page

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Update 11/2024
An issue was discovered with the construction of the flag variables ERCOND, HHCOND, IPCOND, OBCOND, OPCOND, and RXCOND in the 2021 MEPS Medical Conditions PUF. Please do not rely on these flags to identify which condition records link to which event types. Instead, perform the actual linkage to the medical event files using the Condition-Event Linkage file to determine which medical event types are linked to a particular condition record.

Update notes

Documentation

File type

Documentation	PDF (694 KB) / HTML
Codebook	PDF (117 KB) / HTML*
SAS Programming Statements	TXT (74 KB)
SPSS Programming Statements	TXT (7.1 KB)
STATA Programming Statements	TXT (10 KB)
R Programming Statements	TXT (7.8 KB)

Data	File type**

Data File, ASCII format

ZIP (1.1 MB)

Data File, SAS transport format

ZIP (1.5 MB)

Data File, SAS V9 format

ZIP (1.6 MB)

Data File, Stata format

ZIP (1.3 MB)

Data File, XLSX format

ZIP (7.0 MB)

Questionnaires — see Survey Questionnaires
The PDF version of the codebook is recommended for printing; the HTML version is database driven and lets you navigate quickly to details on each variable. *Right-click on the data file link, then select Save Target As or Save Link As to download the file.