Wildwood Medicaid Evaluation and Management payments reach $116,256 in 2024, rising 160%

In 2024, Medicaid providers in Wildwood recorded $116,256 in billings for services within the Evaluation and Management category, based on figures from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. That amount represents a 160% jump from 2023, when $44,714 in claims were submitted for the same services.

Medicaid, a public health insurance program administered by states and backed by both federal and state governments, offers coverage for low-income individuals and families, seniors, children, and people with disabilities. As such, it constitutes a major element of the U.S. health care infrastructure.

Given that taxpayer funds support Medicaid, shifts in local billing levels help show how public dollars for health care are distributed within communities.

The “Evaluation and Management” group includes Medicaid-billed services categorized by the type of care provided, according to standard HCPCS and CPT code groupings. For this analysis, each code was attributed to a single service category utilizing consistent prefixes and code ranges so that comparable services could be tracked together, eliminating duplicate counts and maintaining accurate rankings over time.

Although Medicaid expenditures went up in several service categories, Evaluation and Management had the second-highest total Medicaid payments in Wildwood for 2024.

Statewide in New Jersey, Evaluation and Management ranked third for Medicaid payments in 2024.

Over the five years ending in 2024, Medicaid spending for the Evaluation and Management category in Wildwood rose by $42,907, or 58.5%. Certain years saw particularly strong increases, including in 2021 and 2023, when year-over-year spending climbed.

While Evaluation and Management spending spanned across the city, payments were predominantly focused within a small set of ZIP codes. In 2024, ZIP code 08260 accounted for $116,255 in Evaluation and Management Medicaid payments, and the leading ZIP code made up 100% of related Medicaid payments in Wildwood that year.

Within Evaluation and Management, a small number of individual billing codes represented the bulk of Medicaid payments.

For additional context, Medicaid payments for Evaluation and Management in Wildwood climbed 160% between 2024 and 2023, compared to a 6.6% change for all Medicaid claim categories in the city over the same time frame.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, state and federal Medicaid spending together reached about $871.7 billion for fiscal 2023. That total represented about 18% of national health expenditures, a sharp increase from $613.5 billion in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This increase equates to about 40% growth over several years, driven largely by rising enrollment and usage during and after the pandemic.

Recent federal budget legislation under the Trump administration brought significant proposals to curtail federal spending on Medicaid and overhaul the program. For example, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” enacted in 2025, is expected to reduce federal Medicaid funding by more than $1 trillion over the coming decade and introduces work requirements and greater cost-sharing, potentially cutting coverage and payments for parts of the population. These adjustments may shift more financial responsibility to states and could slow federal Medicaid support, even as tens of millions of Americans remain enrolled.

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.