Medicaid Evaluation and Management payments rise 43.4% in Colorado City, totaling $8,497 in 2024

Data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database shows that in 2024, Medicaid providers in Colorado City submitted $8,497 in claims for Evaluation and Management services. This figure represents a 43.4% rise compared to 2023, when claims for the same category totaled $5,925.

Medicaid is a public insurance program run by states and financed jointly by federal and state governments. The program serves low-income people, families, seniors, children, and individuals with disabilities, making it a key segment of the U.S. health care system.

Since Medicaid payments are funded by taxpayers, shifts in community-level billing reflect how public health resources are deployed locally.

The “Evaluation and Management” category includes a set of Medicaid-billed services classified by the type of medical care based on standardized HCPCS and CPT code clusters. For this report, each billing code was mapped to a single service category using consistent code ranges and prefixes, allowing analysts to group related services, avoid overlaps, and maintain precise rankings across reporting periods.

Evaluation and Management was the second-largest Medicaid payment category in Colorado City in 2024, despite overall increases across multiple service groups in the city.

For the state as a whole, Evaluation and Management was the fourth-largest category by Medicaid payments in 2024.

During the five-year span through 2024, Medicaid payments for Evaluation and Management services in Colorado City climbed by $14,936, or 63.7%. There were especially notable increases in spending from one year to the next in 2020 and 2021.

While Evaluation and Management spending was spread throughout Colorado City, most payments were concentrated in select ZIP codes. In 2024, ZIP code 81019 alone accounted for $8,497, representing 100% of Medicaid payments for this service category in the city.

Payments within the Evaluation and Management category were also concentrated among a small subset of individual billing codes.

To compare, between 2024 and 2023, Medicaid payments in the Evaluation and Management category grew by 43.4% in Colorado City, whereas payments across all Medicaid service categories in the city increased by 306.6% over the same period.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, combined federal and state Medicaid spending in fiscal year 2023 was about $871.7 billion, accounting for approximately 18% of total national health care spending. This is a significant jump from roughly $613.5 billion in 2019, before the onset of COVID-19.

This boost equates to about 40% growth in a few years, largely fueled by higher enrollment and service use during and following the pandemic.

In recent years, federal budget legislation under the Trump administration has included substantial proposals aimed at reducing the federal share of Medicaid funding and restructuring the program. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” enacted in 2025, is expected to cut over $1 trillion in federal Medicaid expenditures over the next decade and introduces policies such as work requirements and increased cost-sharing, which could reduce benefits and funds for some enrollees. These measures may shift additional costs to states and constrain federal Medicaid funding growth, even as the program continues to support 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.