Temple Medicaid spending on pathology and laboratory services climbs to $2,077 in 2024

In 2024, Medicaid providers in Temple billed $2,077 for Pathology and Laboratory Procedures services, based on information from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This represented a 45% increase over 2023, when providers submitted $1,432 in claims for this category of service.

Medicaid is a public health insurance initiative administered by the states and financed cooperatively by federal and state governments. Serving low-income individuals, seniors, children, and people with disabilities, it remains one of the largest components of the U.S. health care system.

Since Medicaid payments originate from tax dollars, shifts in local billing levels reflect how public health care funds are distributed throughout communities.

The “Pathology and Laboratory Procedures” category encompasses a set of services billed to Medicaid and defined by the nature of care delivered, using standard HCPCS and CPT coding groups. In this analysis, billing codes were grouped under a single service category by matching code prefixes and numbers, which enabled aggregation of related services, avoided double counting, and maintained accurate historical rank orderings.

While Medicaid spending rose across several service lines, Pathology and Laboratory Procedures was the fourth largest category by total Medicaid payments in Temple in 2024.

Statewide, Pathology and Laboratory Procedures held ninth place for total Medicaid payments in Pennsylvania during 2024.

Between 2019 and 2024, Medicaid expenditures for Pathology and Laboratory Procedures in Temple increased by $1,825, or 725.3%. The rate of spending growth accelerated in some years, with notable annual changes in both 2021 and 2023.

Spending for services in the Pathology and Laboratory Procedures category occurred throughout Temple but was largely concentrated in a few ZIP codes. In 2024, ZIP code 19560 reported $2,076 in claims for this service category. Collectively, the leading ZIP code accounted for 100% of all Medicaid payments for this category in Temple during the year.

Additionally, within Pathology and Laboratory Procedures, Medicaid dollars were focused on a limited assortment of individual billing codes.

In comparison, Medicaid payments for Pathology and Laboratory Procedures in Temple jumped 45% between 2024 and 2023, while payments across all Medicaid claim categories in the city increased by 19.6% during the same period.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, joint federal and state Medicaid expenditures reached about $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023, comprising roughly 18% of national health spending—a sharp rise from approximately $613.5 billion in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This reflects an increase of about 40% over several years, primarily attributed to higher enrollment and increased use of services during and after the pandemic.

Federal budget legislation passed during the Trump administration has included major initiatives to reduce Medicaid funding and rework the program’s structure. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” enacted in 2025, is anticipated to reduce federal Medicaid spending by more than $1 trillion over the next decade, with new requirements such as mandatory work participation and greater cost-sharing that could restrict coverage and funding for certain enrollees. Such changes are likely to shift a larger share of costs to states and slow the rate of federal Medicaid spending growth, even as the program continues to serve millions of Americans.

Note: HCPCS codes are provided for context within this category. Totals and rankings in this article are derived from standardized service groupings and not by individual billing codes.

Information for this article comes from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. The source data is available here.