CMS’s new health tech initiatives hold promise but raise questions

New initiatives under the aegis of CMS — billed as “Making Health Tech Great Again” — are aimed at speeding the technological transformation of healthcare, which is now facing a deluge of products and services powered by AI.

But while the agency’s efforts may spur patients’ and providers’ use of some technologies, a key question is whether the efforts will effectively advance Americans’ overall health. 

CMS launched the initiatives in 2025 under the direction of Mehmet Oz, MD, MBA, the agency’s administrator, whose longstanding enthusiasm for health technology is well known.^a A major goal is to put more, and better, digital tools into the hands of patients, providers and payers. Actions include, for example, publishing a CMS-approved library of digital applications for use by Medicare patients, and contracting with CLEAR, the company known for its airport security screening service, to create a new secure system that would safeguard Medicare against fraud and other risks by confirming patients’ identities.

But so far, CMS’s efforts are getting more interest and support from tech companies than from conventional healthcare providers. From the providers’ perspective, the true test of the CMS initiatives’ success will be whether they redress real problems in healthcare or make some matters even worse — for example, by further complicating coordination of care for patients or providing meager ROI.

Overview of the CMS tech initiatives

The agency’s Making Health Tech Great Again campaign consists of two broad initiatives.

The first, dubbed the Health Technology Ecosystem, is a voluntary, public-private effort that builds on nearly two decades’ worth of work to spur EHR adoption and achieve interoperability.^b CMS has identified four main goals as paramount for this initiative:

• Enable patients to easily access and share all their health information.
• Equip patients with digital apps and tools for “personalized support, anytime, anywhere.”
• Channel all needed data to providers at the point of care.
• Enable payers, government or private, to support value-based care and desired outcomes on costs and quality through data exchange.

Building atop this first initiative is the second one: A new CMS Innovation Center payment model dubbed ACCESS (Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions), set to go fully into effect in July 2026.

Under ACCESS, CMS will pay entities that provide “technology-supported care options” for patients enrolled in original Medicare who have conditions such as hypertension, prediabetes or diabetes, obesity, chronic kidney disease, atherosclerotic heart disease, chronic musculoskeletal pain and depression or anxiety. 

The participating entities are primarily those that produce wearable devices or digital apps, such as the weight-loss company Noom, and they typically support their patient-users via telehealth or remote patient monitoring. 

The companies must first sign up to be Medicare Part B providers to become eligible for fixed, per-beneficiary payments of $90 to $420 per year if they achieve specified outcomes for patients.^c Once certified by CMS to participate in the program, the companies can solicit Medicare patients to engage with them.

The companies also must communicate with both patients and their other providers (e.g., primary care physicians) through a special CMS application program interface (API) into CMS Aligned Networks — the agency’s designation for  health information networks and exchanges and other health technology platforms that “meet the CMS Interoperability Framework.”^d

At press time, more than 700 organizations and individuals had pledged to support the Health Tech Ecosystem initiative and more than 150 had signed up to participate in ACCESS. In both instances, most participants are tech companies, with only a small number of providers committed — partly due to multiple uncertainties about the initiatives and possible results.

Potential benefits of CMS’s efforts

It’s easy to see why some of these efforts would benefit many patients by reducing unnecessary friction and expanding access in a workforce-constrained health system. One example is the Health Tech Ecosystem’s multistep goal to “kill the clipboard” and ease patients’ ability to share health information among multiple providers. 

In describing that goal’s benefits, Amy Gleason, the CMS strategic adviser leading the overall initiative, shared with attendees at a recent webinar the experiences of her adult daughter, who suffers from a rare autoimmune condition, sees 12 physicians and takes
21 medications.^e

As a result of recent changes spurred by the initiative, Gleason’s daughter can now show a given provider a QR code that enables direct, secure connections with her EHR and other personal health information.

She also used another new Ecosystem feature recently to load her entire EHR into a conversational AI program that identified a clinical trial for which she was potentially qualified. In doing so, the AI program flagged that one aspect of an earlier diagnosis, which had disqualified her for participating in the same trial, had been made in error.

Provider’s lingering concerns

Despite such potential benefits, multiple questions remain for provider organizations — especially about how ACCESS will affect care coordination for patients with chronic illness. Under the model, patients’ regular physicians are to receive periodic electronic updates about their patients’ status from the companies assisting them, and the physicians can also bill Medicare for reviewing the information and co-managing their patients. But until the new interconnected information systems are up and running, many physicians find it hard to believe that this interaction will be seamless — and that it won’t conflict with their own efforts to manage their patients’ care.

Also, the jury is largely still out on the evidence behind use of many wearables and related technologies for advancing quality of care, improving health outcomes or enhancing the cost effectiveness of care. Relatively few products and services in this rapidly evolving field have been tested in randomized clinical trials. And among those that have, results have sometimes been inauspicious.

One well-designed study of a remote monitoring program that tested use of automated text messages to remind patients with hypertension to check their blood pressure found that patients with high readings did have their medications changed more often by their clinicians. But overall, after six months, there was no significant difference in suboptimal blood pressure control among patients in both arms of the trial.^f

Will CMS’s initiatives work? The future will tell

Hope clearly springs eternal, in healthcare as elsewhere, that growing use of technology will always make things better. Now the system stands to learn more about whether, when and how the use of these new tools will actually serve to advance health. 

Footnotes

a. Hut, N., “Dr. Oz describes a reimagined healthcare ecosystem at HFMA event,” news brief, HFMA, June 3, 2025.
b. CMS.gov, “Health technology ecosystem: Making health tech great again,”  page last modified April 15, 2026.
c. Barrington, A., et al., CMMI’s ACCESS model: What health tech providers, life sciences organizations, and ACOs need to know, white paper, Feb. 27, 2026.
d. CMS.gov, “Health tech ecosystem categories,” page last updated Dec. 9, 2025.
e. To view a recording of the webinar, see America’s Physician Groups, “Emerging trends in health care with Amy Gleason,” April 16, 2026
f. Bressman, E., et al., “Automated text message-based program to improve uncontrolled blood pressure in primary care patients: A randomized clinical trial,” Journal of General Internal Medicine, Dec. 4, 2024.