What’s your function? This cartoon song still stuck in our heads from the 70s, it was our Saturday morning medicine, taught us how to connect words and phrases and clauses. ~50 years later, CMS is trying to create a new system to connect people to functional medicine and lifestyle providers. The agency has announced a new model aimed at offering Medicare coverage to functional and lifestyle medicine providers. These physicians try to identify and address root causes of chronic disease using more of a personalized approach with diagnostic tests and helping the person adjust nutrition, sleep and movement—to treat, and even reverse or prevent illness and optimize long-term health.
The government agency plans to select 30 providers to receive a collective $100 million of funding split between two cohorts in 2026 and 2027. Participants will be selected based on the whole-person design of their model, cost savings, and data capability.