): Gynecologic disorders are so common and problematic that more than a third of American women eventually undergo hysterectomy as treatment for these conditions. Each year more than 4 + million American women experience a gynecologic disorder, generating more than 11 million physician office visits. However, little is known about the economic consequences of gynecologic disorders, particularly as concerns outpatient health care utilization and expenditures. In addition, little attention has been paid to the effects of socioeconomic factors such as patient income, insurance coverage, and ethnicity on health care utilization and expenditures for these conditions. The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) uses a population based sampling frame and prospectively tracks health care utilization and expenditures among participants. The MEPS is a uniquely valuable data set because it provides information on health care utilization, medical care expenditures, sources of payment and insurance coverage for a representative sample of the noninstitutionalized population of American citizens, which is obtained via repeated interviews. There have been surprisingly few studies in the national data sets on the use of health care services for gynecologic disorders. Consequently, even basic information on medical care expenditures among women with gynecologic disorders in the US is not available. It is critically important that studies be conducted in national data sets on health care utilization and expenditures pertinent to gynecologic disorders in order to further our understanding of the economic impact of these common conditions and provide policymakers with the ability to measure the impact of system changes on issues of importance to women?s health. Utilizing the 1997 MEPS this study will provide estimates of the health care utilization and expenditures among American women who have one or more gynecologic disorders, estimate the incremental health care utilization and expenditures associated with the presence of one or more gynecologic disorders, and measure the impact of socioeconomic and demographic factors on health care utilization and expenditures among women with these disorders. This study will be the first study to estimate health care utilization for different categories of utilization and expenditures across a range of common gynecologic disorders and will provide information of high potential significance to the health care community.
