Feasibility Study on the Use of Provincial/Territorial Medicare Records for Measuring the Level of Inter-provincial and Inter-territorial Migration - ARCHIVED

The objective of this study is to examine the feasibility of using provincial and territorial health care files of new registrants as an independent measure of preliminary inter-provincial and inter-territorial migration. The study aims at measuring the conceptual and quantifiable differences between this data source and our present source of the Canada Revenue Agency's Canadian Child Tax Benefit.

Criteria were established to assess the quality and appropriateness of these provincial/territorial health care records as a proxy for our migration estimates: coverage, consistency, timeliness, reliability, level of detail, uniformity and accuracy.

Based on the present analysis, the paper finds that these data do not ameliorate the estimates and would not be suitable at this time as a measure of inter-provincial/territorial migration. These Medicare data though are an important independent data source that can be used for quality evaluation.