Portsmouth Medicaid payments for alcohol, drug abuse treatment climb 5.9% in 2024

In 2024, Medicaid providers in Portsmouth billed $70,160,647 for services categorized as Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment, based on figures from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This represented a 5.9% rise from 2023, when claims for the same services totaled $66,232,083.

Medicaid is a health insurance program managed at the state level and funded through both federal and state government resources. The program serves low-income adults and families, seniors, children, and individuals with disabilities, making it one of the largest elements of the U.S. healthcare system.

Since Medicaid funding is derived from taxpayer dollars, fluctuations in local billing volumes highlight how healthcare funds are utilized within the community.

The “Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment” classification includes a range of Medicaid-billed services organized by care type, consistently grouped using standardized HCPCS and CPT codes. For this report, each billing code was linked to one service category using uniform code ranges and prefixes, so related services are grouped together without duplicate counting, allowing accurate long-term rankings.

Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment accounted for the highest total Medicaid payments in Portsmouth in 2024, outpacing other service groups amid broader increases in Medicaid spending categories.

Statewide in Ohio, Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment ranked second among all Medicaid payment categories in 2024.

From 2019 to 2024, Portsmouth’s Medicaid payments for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment grew by $27,136,845, an increase of 63.1%. Some years within this span, such as 2020 and 2021, showed particularly strong year-over-year growth.

Spending for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment was dispersed throughout Portsmouth, though most funds were billed to a small number of ZIP codes. For 2024, ZIP code 45662 reported Medicaid payments totaling $70,160,647 for this category. The top ZIP code accounted for 100% of the city’s Medicaid payments in the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment category during the year.

Most Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment payments were concentrated among a relatively small group of billing codes.

While Medicaid payments for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment in Portsmouth jumped 5.9% from 2023 to 2024, the overall increase across all Medicaid claim categories in the city during the same time frame was 0.5%.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reports that combined Medicaid spending at the state and federal level reached approximately $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023—about 18% of the nation’s total health expenditures. That’s up substantially from $613.5 billion in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

This reflects nearly 40% growth over several years, primarily due to greater enrollment and higher service use during and following the pandemic.

Federal budget actions during the Trump administration have featured significant proposals to decrease federal Medicaid funding and adjust the program’s structure. For instance, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” enacted in 2025, is forecasted to reduce federal Medicaid expenditures by over $1 trillion in the next 10 years. The law introduces measures like work requirements and higher cost-sharing that could decrease coverage and financial support for some enrollees, shifting more burden to states even as Medicaid continues covering 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.