Surgery services in Park Falls received $784 in Medicaid payments for 2024

Park Falls Medicaid providers submitted $784 in claims for procedures grouped under the Surgery category in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. In comparison, providers billed $508 for similar services in 2023, representing a 54.3% increase year over year.

Medicaid, one of the country’s largest public health insurance programs, is operated by states with joint funding from the federal and state governments. It serves low-income populations, seniors, children, and people with disabilities, covering significant portions of U.S. health care needs. For more detail, see joint funding details here.

Since tax dollars fund Medicaid payments, variations in billing levels illustrate how public health funds are distributed across communities.

The Surgery category groups Medicaid-billed procedures by the nature of the care, based on standardized HCPCS and CPT coding. For this analysis, each billing code was classified into a single service category using specific code prefixes and ranges to streamline comparison, ensure each service type is only counted once, and maintain accurate year-to-year rankings.

Even with increases across several service categories, Surgery finished as the ninth highest by total Medicaid payments in Park Falls in 2024.

Statewide, Surgery also held the ninth position among Medicaid payment categories in Wisconsin in 2024.

From 2019 through 2024, Medicaid payments for Surgery in Park Falls grew by $289, or 58.5%, with the most significant annual increases seen in 2021 and 2020.

Spending on Surgery services was present throughout Park Falls, but the funds were focused mainly in a few ZIP codes. For 2024, ZIP code 54552 saw $784 in payments, making it the area with the highest total. In that year, the top ZIP code represented all Medicaid spending under the Surgery category for the city.

Payments within Surgery were mainly associated with a relatively small set of billing codes.

The 54.3% year-over-year growth in Surgery-related Medicaid payments contrasted with a larger 89.6% increase for all Medicaid service categories in the city during the same time.

Data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services indicates that federal and state Medicaid spending totaled about $871.7 billion during fiscal year 2023, accounting for roughly 18% of U.S. health expenditures. This was a sharp rise from the $613.5 billion spent in 2019, preceding the COVID-19 pandemic.

This jump represents an increase of approximately 40% over several years, primarily due to higher enrollment and increased medical use both during and after the pandemic.

Changes enacted through federal budget legislation under the Trump administration have targeted reductions in federal Medicaid support and shifts in program structure. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law in 2025, is forecasted to decrease federal Medicaid spending by over $1 trillion over the next decade and implements features like work requirements and increased cost-sharing. These adjustments are expected to require states to assume greater costs and could restrict federal Medicaid growth, affecting coverage for some beneficiaries, while the program continues to support tens of millions nationwide.

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.