Validating the New Primary Care Measure in the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey

Background:The advancement of primary care research requires reliable and validated measures that capture primary care processes embedded within nationally representative datasets.Objective:The objective of this study was to assess the validity of a newly developed measure of primary care processes [Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS)-PC] with preliminary evidence of moderate to excellent reliability.Study Design:A retrospective cohort study of community-dwelling adults with history of office-based provider visit/s using the MEPS (2013-2014).Methods:The 3 MEPS-PC subscales (Relationship, Comprehensiveness, and Health Promotion) were tested for construct validity against known measures of primary care: Usual Source of Care, Known Provider, and Family-Usual Source of Care. Concurrent and predictive logistic regression analyses were calculated and compared with a priori hypotheses for direction and strength of association.Results:For concurrent validity, all odds ratio estimates conformed with hypotheses, with 91% displaying statistical significance. For predictive validity, all estimates were in the direction of hypotheses, with 92% displaying statistically significant results. Although Relationship and Health Promotion subscales conformed uniformly with hypotheses, the Comprehensiveness subscale yielded significant results in 60% of bivariate odds ratio estimates (P<0.05).Conclusion:The MEPS-PC composite measures display modest to strong preliminary evidence of concurrent and predictive validity relative to known indicators of primary care.Implications for Policy and Practice:The MEPS-PC composite measures display preliminary evidence of concurrent and predictive construct validity, and it may be useful to researchers investigating primary care processes and complexities in the health care environment.