Center Point Medicaid Surgery payments reach $567 in 2024, rising 4.6%

In 2024, Medicaid providers in Center Point billed a total of $567 for services in the Surgery category, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This amount reflects a 4.6% increase from 2023, when billings for Surgery services reached $542.

Medicaid is a state-administered and federally and state-funded public health insurance program. It covers low-income people and families, seniors, children, and individuals with disabilities, making it a major component of the nation’s health care system.

Because public funding underpins Medicaid, trends in local billings illustrate how tax dollars for medical care are directed within a community.

The “Surgery” category includes Medicaid-billed services identified by standardized HCPCS and CPT code sets based on care type. In this review, each code was grouped into a single service category according to consistent numeric and prefix criteria, enabling comparison of related services without overlap and ensuring rankings accurately track changes over time.

While several service categories saw Medicaid expenditures rise, Surgery stood as the second-largest category in Center Point by total dollars billed to Medicaid in 2024.

Statewide, Surgery was ranked 10th for Medicaid payments among all medical categories in Louisiana in 2024.

From 2019 through 2024, Medicaid payments allocated to Surgery in Center Point increased by $474, or 510.5%. Periods of accelerated growth were noted, particularly in 2021 and 2022, where year-over-year increases were significant.

Though the Surgery billing was spread across Center Point, spending was heavily concentrated in a few ZIP codes. ZIP code 71323 accounted for the full $567 in Medicaid Surgery payments in 2024. This ZIP code alone represented 100% of Surgery-related Medicaid payments tracked in the city during the year.

A small number of billing codes received the largest portion of payments categorized as Surgery within Medicaid claims.

Looking at the city overall, the 4.6% increase in Medicaid Surgery payments from 2023 to 2024 was below the 19.4% growth seen across all Medicaid claim categories within the same time frame.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, combined federal and state spending for Medicaid totaled approximately $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023. That represented around 18% of total U.S. health expenditures, increasing from about $613.5 billion in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This increase equates to a roughly 40% growth in just a few years, with enrollment expansion and heightened service use during and after the pandemic as key contributing factors.

Recent federal budget measures under the Trump administration proposed substantial reductions in federal Medicaid support and changes to the program’s structure. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” enacted in 2025, is estimated to trim more than $1 trillion from federal Medicaid spending over the next decade, introducing new requirements such as work mandates and higher cost-sharing, which may diminish coverage and funding for some enrollees. These adjustments are expected to shift added fiscal responsibilities to states and limit further growth in federal Medicaid funding, though the program continues to cover 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.