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| MEPS HC-229F: 2021 Outpatient Visits File |
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Release date: June 2023
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This public use file is one in a series of event-level public use files drawn from the 2021 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) Household Component (HC). Released as an ASCII file with SAS, SPSS, and STATA, and R programming statements, a SAS transport file, a SAS V9 file, a XLSX file, and a Stata file, the Outpatient Visits File provides detailed information on outpatient visits. Data are gathered from a nationally representative sample of the civilian, noninstitutionalized population of the United States and can be used to make estimates of outpatient utilization and expenditures for calendar year 2021. Each record comprises data for one household-reported outpatient visit collected 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. The Outpatient Visits File contains data on several characteristics associated with each outpatient visit, including the date of the visit, whether or not a doctor was seen, types of care and services received, medicines prescribed during the visit, expenditures, and sources of payment. To append person-level information such as demographic or health insurance coverage to each event record, data from this file can be merged with the 2021 MEPS HC Full-Year Consolidated file using the person identifier, DUPERSID.
For more details on loading MEPS PUFs into R, SAS, and Stata, please visit the MEPS GitHub page .
| Documentation |
PDF (512 KB)
/ HTML
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| Codebook |
PDF (192 KB)
/ HTML*
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| SAS Programming Statements |
TXT (43 KB) |
| SPSS Programming Statements |
TXT (12 KB) |
| STATA Programming Statements |
TXT (16 KB) |
| R Programming Statements |
TXT (8.5 KB) |
| Data File, ASCII format |
ZIP (835 KB)
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| Data File, SAS transport format |
ZIP (971 KB)
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| Data File, SAS V9 format |
ZIP (1.1 MB)
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| Data File, Stata format |
ZIP (964 KB)
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| Data File, XLSX format |
ZIP (3.9 MB)
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— see Survey Questionnaires
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*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.
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