Medicaid providers in Riverside submitted $10,590,768 in claims for services within the Dental Services category during 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This total represents a 6.5% rise compared with the prior year, when claims in this category amounted to $9,945,465.
Medicaid, the nation’s publicly funded health insurance program managed by states and jointly financed with federal and state dollars, covers low-income people and families, seniors, children, and individuals with disabilities, and is a major component of the U.S. health care system. Read more.
Since Medicaid is publicly funded, shifts in local payment activity demonstrate community-level allocations of health care funding.
The “Dental Services” designation includes a subset of Medicaid-billed care services determined by the specific care provided and categorized by official HCPCS and CPT code clusters. For this report, each code was linked to only one service group using unified code prefixes and tracked sequential ranges, which avoided double counting and allowed for more accurate year-over-year comparisons and rankings.
For 2024, Dental Services was the seventh-highest ranking category in Riverside by Medicaid payment totals.
At the state level, Dental Services ranked 11th by total Medicaid payments in California.
In the five-year period ending with 2024, Riverside’s Medicaid payments for Dental Services rose by $6,550,551, equaling 162.1%. The pace of this growth increased in select years, notably with annual gains in 2021 and 2022.
Dental Services Medicaid payments in Riverside during 2024 were distributed through the city but showed concentration in specific ZIP codes. The largest payments were recorded in ZIP code 92503 with $4,326,329, followed by 92507 at $1,814,297, and 92504 with $1,623,675. Collectively, these top 3 ZIP codes made up 73.3% of total Dental Services Medicaid payments for the city that year.
The majority of Medicaid spending in the Dental Services category was focused on a small set of individual billing codes.
Comparatively, Dental Services Medicaid payments in Riverside increased 6.5% from 2023 to 2024, while total payments across all Medicaid claim categories in the city grew by 4.5% for the same period.
According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, overall state and federal Medicaid expenditures reached about $871.7 billion in the 2023 fiscal year, representing 18% of national health spending. This figure jumped from $613.5 billion in 2019, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This represents a roughly 40% increase in several years, largely due to higher enrollment and usage linked to the pandemic period.
Recent federal budget laws enacted under the Trump administration have included significant measures to decrease federal Medicaid contributions and restructure funding formulas. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law in 2025, is expected to reduce federal Medicaid spending by over $1 trillion throughout the next decade and adds requirements such as work mandates and greater cost-sharing, which could potentially decrease coverage and funding for some participants. These shifts are projected to increase financial responsibility for the states and narrow federal Medicaid funding growth, even as enrollment remains substantial.
| Year | Total Medicaid Payments | % Change From Previous Year |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | $4,040,217 | -22% |
| 2021 | $6,877,566 | 70.2% |
| 2022 | $9,567,145 | 39.1% |
| 2023 | $9,945,465 | 4% |
| 2024 | $10,590,767 | 6.5% |
| Rank | Category | Medicaid Payments | Share of City Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment | $176,976,070 | 32.5% |
| 2 | National Codes Established for State Medicaid Agencies | $103,952,057 | 19.1% |
| 3 | Medicine Services and Procedures | $95,727,379 | 17.6% |
| 4 | Evaluation and Management | $82,124,833 | 15.1% |
| 5 | Procedures / Professional Services | $25,721,699 | 4.7% |
| 6 | Temporary National Codes (Non-Medicare) | $12,546,198 | 2.3% |
| 7 | Dental Services | $10,590,767 | 1.9% |
| 8 | Surgery | $7,290,992 | 1.3% |
| 9 | Radiology Procedures | $7,006,878 | 1.3% |
| 10 | Pathology and Laboratory Procedures | $4,844,946 | 0.9% |
| 11 | Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies | $3,700,422 | 0.7% |
| 12 | Anesthesia | $3,505,962 | 0.6% |
| 13 | Medical And Surgical Supplies | $3,489,134 | 0.6% |
| 14 | Orthotic Procedures and services | $3,283,486 | 0.6% |
| 15 | Durable Medical Equipment | $993,317 | 0.2% |
| 16 | Prosthetic Procedures | $761,280 | 0.1% |
| 17 | Enteral and Parenteral Therapy | $430,523 | 0.1% |
| 18 | Drugs Administered Other than Oral Method | $390,229 | 0.1% |
| 19 | Temporary Codes | $276,276 | 0.1% |
| 20 | Vision Services | $99,471 | <0.1% |
| 21 | Administrative, Miscellaneous and Investigational | $82,457 | <0.1% |
| 22 | Hearing Services | $57,112 | <0.1% |
| 23 | Chemotherapy Drugs | $54,984 | <0.1% |
| 24 | Durable medical equipment (DME) Medicare administrative contractors (MACs) | $43,851 | <0.1% |
| 25 | Pathology and Laboratory Services | $9,296 | <0.1% |
| 26 | Outpatient PPS | $53 | <0.1% |
| 27 | Other Services | $0 | <0.1% |
| HCPCS Code | Description | Medicaid Payments | Claims |
|---|---|---|---|
| D0120 | Periodic oral evaluation | $4,359,454 | 890 |
| D0150 | Comprehensve oral evaluation | $1,698,289 | 877 |
| D0230 | Intraoral periapical ea add | $1,193,268 | 1,058 |
| D0350 | Oral/facial photo images | $606,784 | 621 |
| D0210 | Intraor comprehensive series | $586,243 | 535 |
| D0274 | Bitewings four images | $452,767 | 656 |
| D0145 | Oral evaluation, pt < 3yrs | $436,689 | 230 |
| D0272 | Dental bitewings two images | $367,197 | 469 |
| D0603 | Caries risk assess high risk | $356,889 | 454 |
| D0220 | Intraoral periapical first | $201,207 | 490 |
| D0330 | Panoramic image | $114,085 | 180 |
| D0140 | Limit oral eval problm focus | $72,380 | 70 |
| D0602 | Caries risk assess mod risk | $50,443 | 129 |
| D0340 | 2d cephalometric image | $49,250 | 40 |
| D0240 | Intraoral occlusal film | $17,344 | 22 |
| D0601 | Caries risk assess low risk | $12,345 | 42 |
| D0270 | Dental bitewing single image | $9,153 | 36 |
| D0470 | Diagnostic casts | $6,975 | 10 |
| D0431 | Diag tst detect mucos abnorm | $0 | 2 |
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.
