Parkston sees 378.4% rise in 2024 Medicaid spending for Pathology and Laboratory Procedures

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database, Medicaid providers in Parkston submitted $1,574 in claims for Pathology and Laboratory Procedures services in 2024. This reflects a 378.4% rise from 2023, when providers billed $329 for this category.

Medicaid is a public health insurance program operated by states with joint federal and state funding, as outlined by the Commonwealth Fund. It supports low-income families and individuals, older adults, children, and those with disabilities, ranking among the major components of the U.S. health care system.

Medicaid funding derives from taxpayers, so fluctuations in local billing offer insight into how health care spending is distributed locally.

The “Pathology and Laboratory Procedures” grouping includes Medicaid-billed services classified by care type, using defined HCPCS and CPT coding groupings. For this report, billing codes were placed into unique service categories based on set prefixes and numeric intervals, making it possible to analyze related services together while preventing duplication and maintaining accurate category rankings.

Spending in multiple Medicaid service categories increased, with Pathology and Laboratory Procedures finishing as the second largest category by Medicaid payments in Parkston for 2024.

Statewide, Pathology and Laboratory Procedures ranked eighth among all Medicaid categories for total payments in South Dakota in 2024.

Examining the five years up to 2024, Medicaid payments for Parkston’s Pathology and Laboratory Procedures rose by $6,653, or 80.9%. Some years saw sharper growth, notably in 2020 and 2022, when year-over-year increases stood out.

While these payments were distributed throughout Parkston, dollars were concentrated in few ZIP codes. In 2024, ZIP code 57366 saw the highest Medicaid payments in this category, making up $1,573. The top ZIP code accounted for 100% of Medicaid spending on Pathology and Laboratory Procedures in Parkston over the year.

Within the overall category, payments were also focused among just a small selection of individual billing codes.

To provide context, the 378.4% increase in Medicaid payments for Pathology and Laboratory Procedures between 2024 and 2023 outpaced the city’s combined Medicaid claim categories, which recorded a 6.4% change during the same window.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reports that combined federal and state Medicaid spending stood at roughly $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023. This made up around 18% of total U.S. health expenditures, rising substantially from about $613.5 billion in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

This nearly 40% increase in a few years has been driven primarily by wider eligibility and greater usage during and following the pandemic.

Recent federal budget legislation under the Trump administration brought forward notable measures to decrease federal Medicaid funding and modify the program. As an example, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” enacted in 2025, is set to cut over $1 trillion in federal Medicaid outlays during the next decade. The law sets new requirements such as mandatory work and greater cost-sharing, which may decrease both coverage and funding for certain recipients. These changes are anticipated to push more costs to state governments and curb federal Medicaid growth over time, despite continued coverage for tens of 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.