A New Flight Plan for Tech Enabled Chronic Care

Bringing your device to market has never been a straight shot from runway to cruising altitude. FDA clearance is necessary but doesn’t guarantee demand or adoption. Without a clear reimbursement path, your innovation can end up living off grants, one off contracts, or fragile RPM codes instead of scaling nationally. Even as value based care has opened new corridors, tech enabled chronic care is often still negotiated one payer and contract at a time. 

The Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions (ACCESS) Model may change that equation. CMS is opening a path for technology supported chronic care, with a 10 year schedule and a standard way to get paid for outcomes, not just visits. ACCESS does not replace regulatory compliance; you still need to meet FDA, HIPAA, and licensure requirements. But once you clear those checks, it gives providers a consistent way to use your device or software and get paid when your patients actually improve. 

ACCESS is a voluntary, 10 year Original Medicare payment model focused on hypertension, diabetes and early cardiometabolic risk, chronic musculoskeletal pain, and behavioral health conditions such as depression and anxiety. Instead of only paying for visits and procedures, ACCESS adds Outcome Aligned Payments (OAPs) on top of fee for service, rewarding organizations that improve clinical and engagement outcomes across their enrolled populations. 

Today, Medicare mostly pays for encounters and procedures, forcing many digital and device based solutions into billing workarounds such as RPM and RTM codes that were not designed for continuous, tech enabled care. Under ACCESS, qualifying participants can receive OAPs tied to measures such as blood pressure and A1c control, pain and function scores, depression symptom improvement, and patient engagement, rather than visit volume.  

These payments are risk adjusted and benchmarked, creating a hybrid model that functions like a chronic care subscription layered on fee for service. Because upside is tied to outcomes, providers have more flexibility to use your mix of tools—remote monitoring, digital CBT, virtual PT, coaching, messaging—to get patients to targets, without needing a separate CPT code for every touchpoint that your product enables. 

The model is built around technology supported care: virtual visits, remote monitoring, digital therapeutics, asynchronous messaging, and other FDA authorized software and devices. The model launches July 1, 2026, with first period applications due April 1, 2026, and a second start date on January 1, 2027—timelines you can build into your roadmap now. 

If you build for ACCESS, key opportunities for your product include: 

• Remote monitoring and connected devices that measurably improve control of hypertension, diabetes, early CKM risk, or chronic pain, supported by escalation workflows and coaching. 

• Digital therapeutics and behavioral health tools for depression, anxiety, sleep, and related conditions that show real world impact in Medicare like populations and support reporting on measures such as PHQ9. 

• Hybrid virtual care services—MSK programs, cardiometabolic clinics, integrated behavioral health models—where your device or software is embedded in care pathways that participate in ACCESS directly or as partners, using OAPs as a recurring revenue stream alongside visit based billing. 

Like everything in medtech, ACCESS will be competitive. To succeed, you will need to align regulatory strategy, evidence, data, and commercial design so that when the model takes off, your solution is the one providers choose. Reach out today to get started.