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Medicare launches ACCESS program to test outcome-based AI-driven care, accepting 150 participants starting July 5 to reshape how federal health programs reimburse AI agents and community support services.
TechCrunch AI · May 13, 2026
AI Summary
- •Pair Team, a healthcare company founded in 2019, was accepted into ACCESS (Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions) as one of 150 participants chosen by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The program goes live July 5. Pair Team deploys Flora, a voice AI agent available 24 hours a day, to handle patient intake, coordinate referrals, and conduct check-ins between clinical visits.
- •ACCESS replaces traditional Medicare's time-based reimbursement model with outcome-based payments: participating organizations receive predictable payments for managing qualifying conditions (diabetes, hypertension, chronic kidney disease, obesity, depression, and anxiety) and earn the full amount only when patients meet measurable health goals like lower blood pressure or reduced pain. This creates a federal payment mechanism for AI agents that monitor patients between visits—a structure that did not exist before.
- •Pair Team says it currently has partnerships giving it access to roughly 500,000 potential patients and wants to reach a million within three years. The company employs roughly 850 clinical professionals, runs what it describes as the largest community health workforce in California, and generates revenue above nine figures. It has raised about $30 million, backed by Kleiner Perkins, Kraft Ventures, and Next Ventures.
- •The program carries documented risks: participants feed sensitive patient data into federal infrastructure with a history of breaches, and CMS Innovation Center's prior decade increased federal spending by $5.4 billion rather than producing projected savings. Reimbursement rates are lower than many participants anticipated, meaning the financial math works only for organizations that have fully automated most patient interactions.
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