Author
Joshua Cook
Assistant Director of External Relations
Contact
ACHI Communications
501-526-2244
jlyon@achi.net
The health and healthcare outcomes of Arkansans, as well as the amounts spent on health care, can vary greatly across the state. In fact, the 2025 County Health Rankings & Roadmaps report identified some Northwest Arkansas counties as being among the healthiest in the country while others, predominantly in the southeast corner of the state, were among the least healthy. ACHI previously used data available in the Arkansas Healthcare Expenditures Dashboard, an interactive tool that draws on the Arkansas Healthcare Transparency Initiative’s All-Payer Claims Database, to provide more perspective on variations in medical spending in Southeast and Northwest Arkansas. In this post, we will look at medical expenditures in Faulkner, Lonoke, Pulaski, and Saline counties in Central Arkansas, which falls directly between the two corners in terms of geography and more.
The Arkansas Healthcare Expenditures Dashboard is intended to support assessments of health system performance, healthcare access challenges, and the influence of various factors on healthcare spending in the state. The payment amounts indicated in the dashboard reflect total claim amounts paid to healthcare providers — a combination of payments by insurers and insured individuals’ out-of-pocket payments — for the years 2021-2023. The dashboard includes commercial, Medicaid, Medicaid qualified health plans (QHPs), Medicare, and Medicare Advantage payers but does not include self-insured data. For this examination, we will focus not on all claims but specifically on medical expenditures for 2021, the most recent year for which Medicare data are available.
Average Annualized Medical Expenditures in Central Arkansas
Across Faulkner, Lonoke, Pulaski, and Saline counties, spending on medical care totaled nearly $4.8 billion in 2021. By county, expenditures ranged from $460 million in Lonoke County to $2.7 billion in Pulaski County, the most populated county in the state.
Average annualized (i.e., estimated for a full year whenever data for a full year were not available) expenditure calculations available in the dashboard allow users to get a clearer understanding of per-person spending regardless of population size. Statewide, the average annualized per-person expenditure for medical care was $9,277 in 2021. At the county level, average annualized per-person expenditures ranged from a low of $7,412 in Northwest Arkansas’s Washington County to a high of $13,632 for Bradley County in Southeast Arkansas. In the four Central Arkansas counties highlighted here, however, average annualized expenditures were closer to the statewide average.
Of the four counties, Pulaski had the lowest average annualized per-person medical expenditure in 2021 at $9,364, while Lonoke had the second lowest at $9,422. Average annualized medical expenditures for Saline and Faulkner counties were very close at $9,827 and $9,831, respectively. Those expenditure levels put the Central Arkansas counties right between the below-average expenditures in the four Northwest Arkansas previously highlighted and the above-average expenditures seen in the four Southeast Arkansas counties.
Medicare and Medicare Advantage Enrollment and Expenditures in Central Arkansas
Medicare Advantage, introduced in 1997 as an alternative to traditional Medicare, has seen increasing adoption by Medicaid-eligible populations over the years. By 2021, 31% of the Medicare-eligible population of Faulkner, Lonoke, Pulaski, and Saline counties was enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans. Saline County had the highest adoption of these plans, with 37% of the Medicare-eligible population enrolled, whereas Faulkner County had the lowest adoption at 26%.
Average annualized medical expenditures were consistently higher for traditional Medicare enrollees than for Medicare Advantage enrollees across all four Central Arkansas counties in 2021.
- In Faulkner County, the average annualized medical expenditure for Medicare Advantage enrollees was $4,612 less than the average expenditure for Medicare enrollees in the county.
- In Lonoke County, the average annualized medical expenditure for Medicare Advantage enrollees was $6,932 less than the average expenditure for Medicare enrollees in the county.
- In Pulaski County, the average annualized medical expenditure for Medicare Advantage enrollees was $5,280 less than the average expenditure for Medicare enrollees in the county.
- In Saline County, the average annualized medical expenditure for Medicare Advantage enrollees was $7,826 less than the average expenditure for Medicare enrollees in the county.
Of the four counties, Saline had not only the highest adoption of Medicare Advantage plans but also the biggest difference in average annualized medical expenditures between enrollees in traditional Medicare and enrollees in Medicare Advantage plans. Medical expenditures for Medicare Advantage-enrolled patients in the county were 42% less than expenditures for patients enrolled in traditional Medicare.
Of all the payer types included in the dashboard — commercial, traditional Medicaid, Medicaid QHPs, Medicare, and Medicare Advantage — traditional Medicare had the highest total expenditures for the four counties, representing 33% of payments, or $1.6 billion, for medical care in 2021.
Medicaid Expansion Enrollment and Expenditures in Central Arkansas
Medicaid QHPs cover most of the state’s Medicaid expansion population. In the four Central Arkansas counties, Medicaid QHPs covered 72,224 low-income adults, accounting for 13% of covered individuals, in 2021. Medical payments for Medicaid QHP patients in these counties totaled nearly $475 million.
The publication of the Arkansas Healthcare Expenditures Dashboard in November 2024 marks the first time data on the state’s healthcare expenditures have been made available at this level in an accessible and interactive manner. The dashboard can be used to ask a wide array of questions about healthcare spending in Arkansas, including much more specific and varied questions than those asked in this post.
