Port Angeles Medicaid spending on ambulance, transport services reaches $747,363 in 2024

Medicaid providers in Port Angeles billed $747,363 in 2024 for the Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies category, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This represented a 1.2% increase over 2023, when providers filed $738,351 in claims for this category of service.

Medicaid serves as a public health insurance option, managed by states and funded by both federal and state governments. It covers low-income adults and families, older adults, children, and individuals with disabilities, making it a significant part of the U.S. health system.

Since Medicaid spending involves taxpayer dollars, changing local billing amounts indicate how funds are distributed throughout a community’s health infrastructure.

The “Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies” category groups together Medicaid-billed services based on HCPCS and CPT code groupings by type of care provided. For this report, each billing code was assigned to a category using uniform code prefixes and ranges, supporting the analysis of related service types without double counting and ensuring accuracy over time.

Although Medicaid expenditures rose in several categories, Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies ranked seventh among Medicaid payments by service category in Port Angeles for 2024.

In Washington, the same category also held the seventh spot by total Medicaid payments at the statewide level in 2024.

During the five-year span ending in 2024, Port Angeles saw Medicaid payments in this category climb by $171,761, or 29.8%. Higher spending growth occurred in select years, notably in 2020 and 2023.

Although payments for ambulance and transport care were spread across the city, the majority of Medicaid funds were directed to a select few ZIP codes. In 2024, ZIP code 98362 alone accounted for all $747,363 in Medicaid payments linked to this category, making up 100% of ambulance-related Medicaid spending in Port Angeles that year.

Within this category, Medicaid payments were highly concentrated among relatively few specific billing codes.

For reference, Medicaid payments for the Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies category in Port Angeles increased 1.2% from 2023 to 2024, while all Medicaid claim categories rose by 3.7% in the city for the same period.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, joint federal and state Medicaid spending came to approximately $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023, making up about 18% of total national health care expenditures and rising sharply from $613.5 billion in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This reflects an increase of around 40% in a few years, primarily due to growth in Medicaid enrollment and higher utilization rates during and after the pandemic.

Recent federal budget laws enacted under the Trump administration featured substantial plans to curb federal Medicaid funding and reshape the program. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” enacted in 2025, is slated to reduce federal Medicaid spending by over $1 trillion in the next decade and introduces new policies like work requirements and additional cost-sharing, which could impact coverage and funding for some beneficiaries. These measures are expected to shift a greater share of Medicaid expenditures to states and constrain federal funding growth, even as the program continues to support millions of people nationwide.

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.