NEVVI Medicare utilization intelligence

Medicare pays for a cataract surgery in the U.S. about every 8 seconds

Published Jul 2026 · CMS Part B PUF 📋 Cite See the data →
How often Medicare pays for a cataract surgery · by year · 2020–2024
2020every 11s2021every 9s2022every 9s2023every 8s2024every 8s
Each dial shows the average time between events that year (a full dial is a minute or more). Medicare fee-for-service cataract surgical episodes, scaled to total Medicare enrollment (est.). Full method below.

That pace holds across the whole year: about one every 8 seconds, or roughly 10,300 a day.

The annual total sits behind the pace. The fee-for-service record carries about 1.9 million cataract surgical episodes in 2024; scaled for Medicare Advantage, an estimated 3.7 million across all of Medicare.

Volume this high tracks an aging, growing population. Cataract is among the most common operations Medicare pays for, prevalence climbs steeply with age, and the eligible population keeps expanding. The count describes how often the surgery is billed, not why.

A volume record and a scale illustration, not a statement of need or benefit — it counts how often the surgery is billed, not whether any case was necessary.

What this is

A count of fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries with a cataract surgical episode in 2024, scaled to total Medicare enrollment and divided across the seconds in the year.

What it is not

Not billed claim lines, not an exact operation count, not all-payer, and not a surgical-outcomes measure.

How this is counted
Beneficiary counts on the cataract-removal (lens-replacement) claim codes for 2024 — counting beneficiaries with a surgical episode, not billed claim lines, which include post-operative co-management visits and would overstate surgeries several-fold. A person whose two eyes are billed under the same procedure code counts once, understating operations; a person billed under different codes, or by different practices, can count twice. The fee-for-service record is scaled to total Medicare enrollment for the estimated total; the calculation assumes MA per-capita utilization ≈ FFS, and MA plans may manage utilization differently, so the scaled figures are estimates. Cells under 11 beneficiaries withheld by CMS. Source: Medicare Part B.

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