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A flexible model for correlated medical costs, with application to medical expenditure panel survey data
Author(s) -
Chen Jinsong,
Liu Lei,
Shih YaChen T.,
Zhang Daowen,
Severini Thomas A.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
statistics in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.996
H-Index - 183
eISSN - 1097-0258
pISSN - 0277-6715
DOI - 10.1002/sim.6743
Subject(s) - akaike information criterion , medical expenditure panel survey , covariance , panel data , computer science , econometrics , spline (mechanical) , medical costs , statistics , mathematics , economics , engineering , health care , structural engineering , health insurance , economic growth
We propose a flexible model for correlated medical cost data with several appealing features. First, the mean function is partially linear. Second, the distributional form for the response is not specified. Third, the covariance structure of correlated medical costs has a semiparametric form. We use extended generalized estimating equations to simultaneously estimate all parameters of interest. B‐splines are used to estimate unknown functions, and a modification to Akaike information criterion is proposed for selecting knots in spline bases. We apply the model to correlated medical costs in the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey dataset. Simulation studies are conducted to assess the performance of our method. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.