12 MEPS Cost Analysis Made Easy

MEPS Cost Analysis Made Easy by Pharma Co-Pilot

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The Economic Burden Project: A Deep Dive into Healthcare Cost Analysis with MEPS

This project is your definitive guide to performing a rigorous healthcare cost analysis, one of the most fundamental and sought-after skills in the entire life sciences industry. We will use the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) the gold-standard, nationally representative dataset for understanding healthcare spending in the United States. This project is designed to demystify the complexities of MEPS, guiding you through the exact methodology used by HEOR professionals to quantify the economic burden of disease. You will move from simply knowing about health economics to actively performing a real-world cost analysis that can inform policy, market access, and value demonstration.

Table of Contents

• The Core Question We’ll Answer
• Why MEPS is the Gold Standard for Cost Analysis
• The Challenge: The Intricate World of MEPS Data
• What You Will Master: The Complete Cost Analysis Workflow
• The Co-Pilot Process: Your Guided Journey
• Your Final Deliverable Package & Pricing

The Core Question We’ll Answer

“Using the MEPS database, what is the total annual economic burden for patients with a specific chronic disease (e.g., Type 2 Diabetes)? We will conduct a full cost analysis to quantify total healthcare expenditures, out-of-pocket costs, and prescription drug spending, then compare these costs to a matched non-diabetic cohort.”

Why MEPS is the Gold Standard for Cost Analysis

MEPS is unparalleled for conducting a patient-level cost analysis because of its unique and powerful survey design:

• It Follows People Over Time: As a panel survey, MEPS tracks the same individuals for two full years, providing a complete picture of their healthcare utilization and spending over a meaningful period.
• It Links Conditions to Costs: This is its superpower. MEPS allows you to connect every single doctor visit, hospital stay, and filled prescription back to a specific medical condition. This makes a true, bottom-up cost analysis possible.
• It’s Nationally Representative: MEPS is meticulously designed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to be a statistical mirror of the entire U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population, allowing you to generalize your findings with confidence.
• It Captures All Payer Types: It includes data on payments from all sources private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and direct patient out-of-pocket spending.

The Challenge: The Intricate World of MEPS Data

While MEPS is a treasure trove of information, its complexity is a major barrier for researchers. A credible cost analysis requires overcoming several significant technical hurdles:

1. A Labyrinth of Files: MEPS data is not one file. It’s a collection of dozens of interconnected files (Consolidated Full-Year, Medical Conditions, Prescribed Medicines, etc.) that must be correctly merged using unique person-level identifiers (DUPERSID).
2. The Mandate of Survey Weights: This is the most critical challenge. Simply calculating an average cost in MEPS is statistically incorrect. You must apply the survey weights provided in the dataset to account for the complex sampling design and produce nationally representative estimates.
3. The Art of Cost Attribution: How do you decide which costs are related to the disease of interest and which are not? This requires a careful, methodical approach to link event-level expenditure data back to a patient’s diagnosed conditions.

This project is meticulously designed to provide the expert guidance needed to navigate this complexity correctly.

What You Will Master: The Complete Cost Analysis Workflow

This is a masterclass in health economics. You will learn the entire end-to-end workflow:

• Cost of Illness Methodology: Learn the foundational HEOR framework for quantifying the economic burden of a disease from the ground up.
• Complex Data Wrangling: This is a core learning objective. You will learn the logic of merging multiple, complex data files to construct a complete patient profile for your cost analysis.
• Correct Application of Survey Weights: Gain hands-on understanding of why and how to apply survey weights in SAS or R to generate statistically valid, nationally representative results.
• Expenditure Analysis: Learn to break down total costs into their most important components, such as pharmacy vs. medical spending, or insurer vs. out-of-pocket costs.
• Communicating Economic Value: Master the art of presenting the results of a cost analysis in a clear, compelling way using impactful charts and tables that speak to a strategic audience.

The Co-Pilot Process: Your Guided Journey

1. Phase 1: Scoping & Protocol: We begin with a deep-dive session to select a chronic disease for your cost analysis and define the exact research questions and patient cohorts.
2. Phase 2: Data Curation & Merging: Our experts will download the relevant MEPS data files and perform the most difficult step: correctly linking the person, condition, and event files to create a single, analysis-ready dataset.
3. Phase 3: Statistical Analysis: We conduct the full, correctly weighted cost analysis, calculating the mean expenditures for each cohort and performing statistical tests to compare them.
4. The Co-Pilot Mentorship Session: In our signature 90-minute recorded session, we will walk you through the entire code and methodology. We’ll explain the logic of the data merges, the application of survey weights, and how to interpret the final results to tell a powerful economic story.

Your Final Deliverable Package & Pricing

This premier HEOR project delivers a portfolio piece that demonstrates one of the most valuable skills in the industry.

• • Includes a professional-grade Cost of Illness Report (PowerPoint/PDF), the complete Annotated Code Script (SAS/R), the final analysis-ready dataset, and the 90-Minute Co-Pilot Session Recording.
  • Includes the final Cost of Illness Report (PowerPoint/PDF).

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