CMS launches payment model addressing lifestyle medicine, chronic disease

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Dec. 11 announced the launch of the Make America Healthy Again: Enhancing Lifestyle and Evaluating Value-based Approaches Through Evidence Model, a voluntary payment model that will fund up to 30 chronic disease prevention and health promotion proposals. The proposals must include evidence-based functional or lifestyle medicine interventions not covered by Original Medicare. Under the MAHA ELEVATE Model, CMS said it will evaluate necessary data on the cost and quality of such interventions to inform future decisions on the feasibility of including them in Original Medicare. The agency will release a funding notice in early 2026 for the first cohort, which will begin Sept. 1, 2026. The second cohort will begin one year later.