NEVVI Medicare utilization intelligence

Medicare pays for a hip replacement in the U.S. about every 57 seconds

Published Jul 2026 · CMS Part B PUF 📋 Cite See the data →
How often Medicare pays for a hip replacement · by year · 2020–2024
2020every 95s2021every 77s2022every 67s2023every 61s2024every 57s
Each dial shows the average time between events that year (a full dial is a minute or more). Estimated total-Medicare hip-replacement surgeries, scaled to total Medicare enrollment (est.). Full method below.

That pace holds across the whole year: about one every 57 seconds, or roughly 1,500 a day.

The annual total sits behind the pace. The fee-for-service record carries about 0.3 million hip-replacement surgeries in 2024; scaled for Medicare Advantage, an estimated 0.6 million across all of Medicare.

Volume this high tracks aging and joint-wear prevalence. Hip replacement is among the highest-volume operations Medicare pays for, and both the eligible population and degenerative joint disease at older ages keep the demand large. 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 total-hip-arthroplasty claim 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 total-hip-arthroplasty claim for 2024 — one per beneficiary per billing practice, counting patients, not billed claim lines, which include post-operative visits and would overstate surgeries. A both-hips case billed under the same code counts once, understating operations; a patient billed by more than one practice or setting in the year can count more than once. Net, the count runs close to the number of operations, stated without claiming a categorical under- or over-count. 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.

Related statistics

Medicare pays for a cataract surgery in the U.S. about every 8 seconds
The Human Scale · 2024
Medicare pays for a knee replacement in the U.S. about every 31 seconds
The Human Scale · 2024
For the same yearly wellness visit, Medicare approves $125.76 in Arkansas and $173.21 in San Benito County, CA
The Rulebook · 2026
Physician groups billed Medicare about $4 for every $1 they were paid — $200 billion billed, $50 billion paid, in 2024
The Charge Gap · 2024
Medicare covered an estimated 290,000 acupuncture visits in the U.S. in 2024 — from zero in 2019
Booming · 2020–2024