Pathology and laboratory Medicaid claims in Mammoth Spring total $477 for 2024

Data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database show that Medicaid providers in Mammoth Spring billed $477 for Pathology and Laboratory Procedures in 2024. This represents a 22.3% increase compared with 2023, when billing for those services reached $390.

Medicaid is a public insurance program managed by states and financed in partnership between federal and state governments. The program covers low-income families and individuals, seniors, children, and people with disabilities, establishing itself as a major segment of the U.S. health care landscape.

Since Medicaid expenses are publicly funded, trends in billing highlight how local health care resources are directed within the community.

The “Pathology and Laboratory Procedures” category includes various Medicaid-billed services determined by the type of care delivered, using standard HCPCS and CPT code groupings. For this report, each billing code was mapped to a single service group based on standardized code prefixes and numeric ranges, which allows for aggregate analysis while reducing double counting and maintaining consistency in year-to-year comparisons.

For 2024, Pathology and Laboratory Procedures held the city’s second-highest total in Medicaid spending among all service categories in Mammoth Spring.

Statewide, this category represented the sixth-largest Medicaid payment category across Arkansas for 2024.

During the five years preceding 2024, Mammoth Spring’s Medicaid payments tied to Pathology and Laboratory Procedures rose by $477, reflecting a 0% change. In some intervals, the growth rate quickened, particularly with pronounced annual jumps occurring in 2023 and 2022.

Payments for Pathology and Laboratory Procedures were concentrated in just a handful of ZIP codes, with most claim dollars in 2024 coming from ZIP code 72554, which totaled $476. Collectively, the leading ZIP code accounted for 99.9% of Mammoth Spring’s Medicaid billing for this service category in 2024.

Analysis also shows that among Pathology and Laboratory Procedures, payments were clustered around a limited set of billing codes.

Between 2023 and 2024, Medicaid spending for this category in Mammoth Spring climbed 22.3%, while overall Medicaid payments for all categories recorded a 42% increase citywide during the same timeframe.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reports that combined federal and state Medicaid spending rose to about $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023, accounting for roughly 18% of all national health expenditures. This is a sharp climb from approximately $613.5 billion in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

That rise works out to about a 40% increase in several years, with drivers such as expanded enrollments and increased usage following the onset of the pandemic period.

Federal budget measures passed during the Trump administration included broad attempts to reduce federal Medicaid contributions and modify the program’s structure. For instance, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” enacted in 2025, is expected to cut federal Medicaid spending by more than $1 trillion over 10 years. The law introduces changes like work requirements and greater cost-sharing that could limit access and funding for certain recipients. This would likely transfer additional costs to states and restrain federal Medicaid growth, even as millions of Americans remain covered by the program.

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.