Surgery-related Medicaid costs in Lonoke rise to $2,095 in 2024

Providers in Lonoke reported $2,095 in Medicaid claims for services under the Surgery category in 2024, using figures from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This reflects a 219.8% jump over 2023, when $655 was billed for the same category of service.

Medicaid, administered by individual states and supported financially by both federal and state governments, serves low-income groups, seniors, children, and people with disabilities, making it a major component of the American health system. Additional details are available from the Commonwealth Fund.

Because Medicaid funding comes from public sources, shifts in local claim levels highlight how government healthcare resources are utilized in communities.

The “Surgery” category covers specific Medicaid services, as grouped by standardized HCPCS and CPT code structures. Each code for this report was assigned based on consistent prefix definitions and numeric series, ensuring grouped analysis of like services and eliminating duplication for accurate rankings over time.

Though multiple service categories saw higher claim volumes, Surgery placed 8th among Medicaid payment categories in Lonoke during 2024.

On a statewide scale, Surgery was Arkansas’ 10th largest category by Medicaid payments in 2024.

From 2019 to 2024, Lifetime Medicaid expenditures in the Surgery category for Lonoke rose by $2,050—a 4,555.6% increase. Certain years, including 2022 and 2023, saw especially rapid spending growth.

The city’s Medicaid spending for Surgery services was present in a handful of ZIP codes. In 2024, ZIP code 72086 accounted for all $2,095 in Surgery-category Medicaid payments. This single ZIP code represented 100% of local Medicaid spending in this category for the year.

A small subset of billing codes in the Surgery group saw the majority of Medicaid payments.

Comparatively, the rise in Surgery-category Medicaid spending in Lonoke from 2023 to 2024 (219.8%) far outpaced the overall 20.4% uptick across all Medicaid claim categories locally during the same period.

Data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services puts total state and federal Medicaid outlays at around $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023, or about 18% of whole national health spending. This rose by roughly $258 billion from $613.5 billion in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

This marks an increase of nearly 40% within a few years, most of which came from more enrollees and greater healthcare use during and after the pandemic.

Recent federal budgets under the Trump administration have introduced large-scale measures designed to reduce federal support for Medicaid and change how the program runs. For instance, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” enacted in 2025, is expected to cut more than $1 trillion in total federal Medicaid money through the next 10 years. The law also introduces policies such as required work and higher out-of-pocket costs, which could potentially narrow coverage for some and place additional costs on states despite the ongoing need for Medicaid among millions of Americans.

Note: HCPCS codes are shown for context within the category. Category totals and rankings in this article are based on standardized service groupings rather than individual billing codes.

Information in this article was obtained from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. The source data can be found here.