Hot Springs Medicaid payments for National Codes group rise to $26,260,686 in 2024

Hot Springs Medicaid providers submitted $26,260,686 in claims for services categorized under the National Codes Established for State Medicaid Agencies in 2024, according to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending data. This represents a 65.4% increase over 2023, when $15,873,809 was billed for the same services.

Medicaid is a state-operated health insurance program that is jointly funded by federal and state governments. It serves low-income families and individuals, seniors, children and those with disabilities, making it a major component of the U.S. health system.

Since Medicaid dollars come directly from taxpayers, shifts in local spending show how health care funds are distributed within a community.

The “National Codes Established for State Medicaid Agencies” group consists of a set of Medicaid-billed services identified by the care provided, using standardized HCPCS and CPT code groupings. For this review, analysts assigned each billing code to a single service category based on code prefixes and numeric ranges, so related services could be grouped without double-counting and to ensure accurate trends over time.

While a range of service categories saw higher Medicaid spending, National Codes Established for State Medicaid Agencies was Hot Springs’ largest category by total Medicaid payments in 2024.

Statewide in Arkansas, the National Codes Established for State Medicaid Agencies category also led all service groups in total payments for 2024.

In Hot Springs, Medicaid spending tied to this category jumped by $12,125,696 over the five years ending in 2024, an 85.8% increase. Some of the sharpest annual increases occurred in 2021 and 2022.

Though care classified in the National Codes Established for State Medicaid Agencies category was delivered throughout the city, just a handful of ZIP codes accounted for most of the spending. In 2024, ZIP codes 71913 and 71901 reported $18,039,803 and $8,220,883 in Medicaid payments, respectively, together comprising all payments in this group for Hot Springs that year.

Payments within this Medicaid service group were mostly tied to a small set of individual billing codes.

Between 2024 and 2023, Medicaid billings in this category for Hot Springs rose by 65.4%, compared to a 7.4% change across all Medicaid categories citywide in the same time frame.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, combined state and federal Medicaid outlays reached around $871.7 billion for fiscal year 2023. That represented about 18% of total U.S. health expenditures, up from roughly $613.5 billion in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

This jump amounts to an increase of nearly 40% in just a few years, largely due to expanded enrollment and greater utilization during and after the pandemic.

Recent federal budget laws enacted during the Trump administration put forward substantial cuts to federal Medicaid funding and propose new program structures. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,”, for instance, was enacted in 2025 and is forecasted to reduce federal Medicaid spending by more than $1 trillion over 10 years, through policies like work requirements and increased cost-sharing—changes that could restrict coverage and spending for certain groups. States are likely to take on a larger share of program costs under these changes, even as Medicaid continues to provide insurance for 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.