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| MEPS HC-118A: 2008 Prescribed Medicines File |
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Release date: October 2010
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This file is one in a series of public use event files from the 2008 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Household Component (MEPS HC) and Medical Provider Component (MPC). Released as an ASCII data file and SAS transport file (with SAS, SPSS, and STATA programming statements) this public use file provides detailed information on household-reported prescribed medicines for a nationally representative sample of the civilian noninstitutionalized population of the United States and can be used to make estimates of prescribed medicine utilization and expenditures for calendar year 2008. Each record represents one household-reported prescribed medicine that was purchased during calendar year 2008. These data were collected during the 2008 portion of Round 3 and Rounds 4 and 5 for Panel 12, as well as Rounds 1, 2 and the 2008 portion of Round 3 for Panel 13 of the MEPS HC. Each record on this event file represents a unique prescribed medicine event; that is, a prescribed medicine reported as being purchased or otherwise obtained by the household respondent, and includes the following: an identifier for each unique prescribed medicine; detailed characteristics associated with the event (e.g., national drug code (NDC), medicine name, etc.); selected Multum Lexicon variables; conditions, if any, associated with the medicine; the date on which the person first used the medicine; total expenditure and sources of payments; types of pharmacies that filled the household's prescriptions; and a full-year person level weight.
⚠ A problem was discovered with the linking between the MEPS Prescribed Medicines files and the Cerner Multum file that resulted in some incorrect therapeutic classes being assigned. The Multum Lexicon Addendum files (HC-068) contain the corrected therapeutic classes. Analysts should use caution when using the Cerner Multum therapeutic class variables for analysis and should always check for accuracy, because the Multum classification has been changed by the addition of new classes and subclasses, and by changes in the hierarchy of classes. See the documentation for the Multum Lexicon Addendum files for examples.
The Multum Lexicon Addendum files (HC-068) also contain an additional variable not in the 1996 through 2012 MEPS Prescribed Medicines files: the generic name of the drug most commonly used by prescribing physicians.
Update notes
| Documentation |
PDF (339 KB)
/ HTML
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| Codebook |
PDF (112 KB)
/ HTML*
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| SAS Programming Statements |
TXT (42 KB) |
| SPSS Programming Statements |
TXT (280 KB) |
| STATA Programming Statements |
TXT (284 KB) |
| Data File, ASCII format |
ZIP (7.2 MB)
/ EXE (7.3 MB)
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| Data File, SAS transport format |
ZIP (8.2 MB)
/ EXE (8.3 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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