CMS TEAM & Bundled Payments: How to Succeed with AI

In January 2026, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will launch the Transforming Episode Accountability Model (TEAM), a mandatory bundled payment initiative that will redefine reimbursement for five surgical and procedural care episodes.

TEAM marks a pivotal shift from fee-for-service billing to a bundled payment structure that covers an entire episode of care from surgery through 30 days post-discharge. Hospitals will be financially rewarded or penalized after Year 1 based on their ability to deliver coordinated, cost-effective, and high-quality care.

To succeed, hospitals must have proper mechanisms in place, like IDENTI’s Snap&Go, which offers a proven, AI-powered way to ensure compliance with accurate charge capture and data-integrated workflows and gain critical insight into usage patterns.

What is the CMS TEAM Model? A New Era of Bundled Payments

TEAM is the next step in CMS’s broader efforts to improve the quality of care while reducing Medicare spending through bundled payments. TEAM shares similarities with earlier models such as Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR) and the voluntary Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI), but is broader in scope and accountability.

For selected procedures, TEAM represents a two-sided risk model: rewarding cost-effective care and penalizing inefficiency or poor outcomes. Hospitals must prove they delivered coordinated, high-quality care using accurate, complete, and timely documentation. The chosen procedures are significant for hospitals’ revenue, as they make up 6% of Medicare inpatient volumes and 10% of Medicare inpatient revenues.

Under TEAM, CMS sets a target price for each episode based on total Medicare Parts A & B spending, adjusted for patient and hospital risk. An episode starts with a defined hospitalization (MS-DRG) or procedure (HCPCS). Hospitals are responsible for managing care within that target price, with performance assessed on both spending and quality outcomes.

Year 1 is a no-risk transition period, so even if hospitals spend above the target price, there is no penalty. Starting in Year 2, hospitals that overspend face penalties, while those who stay below target and meet quality metrics will earn reconciliation payments.

Meeting these financial and quality benchmarks will require new levels of coordination and real-time insight across hospital teams, including:

• Multidisciplinary coordination: Clinical, administrative, and financial teams aligned to manage costs and outcomes.
• Real-time episode tracking: Systems that capture products and services as they’re delivered, ensuring complete documentation.
• Integrated data: Full episode-level visibility to support billing, reporting, and decision-making.

The High Cost of Missed Charge Capture

One of the greatest risks under TEAM is missed or delayed charge capture, since accurate documentation directly determines both compliance and reimbursement.

Consider these real-world examples:

• A nurse uses a $4,000 implant but forgets to document it. It’s missing from the EHR, and the claim, resulting in lost revenue and posing a patient safety risk in the event of a product recall.
• A surgeon uses a $40,000 implant, 70% of CMS’s target cost for the bundle. Without accurate case-level data, the hospital has no way to evaluate whether that spend is sustainable under TEAM.
• Coders reconstruct the case from fragmented notes a week later. Studies show that when product data is entered more than 72 hours after use, up to 25% of items may be mis-documented or omitted.

How AI-Powered Automation Prepares Hospitals for Bundled Payments

Automated item capture at the point of care is essential under TEAM, as even a single undocumented or misclassified product can tip an episode into penalty territory. IDENTI’s Snap&Go AI-powered camera

ensures complete charge capture, giving hospitals the data to stay compliant, optimize reimbursement, and make smarter, episode-level decisions.

By combining computer vision and machine learning to automatically capture item-level data at the point of care, including product type, usage volume, expiration status, and procedure context, Snap&Go generates detailed cost-per-case insights that help hospitals identify outliers, reduce variation, and optimize spend across episodes of care.

No extra manual entry. No barcode scanning. No guesswork.

The Power of Real-Time Surgical Documentation

Automated process ensures:

1. 100% Charge Capture: Every item used in the OR is documented and billed, minimizing missed revenue.
2. Bundled Payment Readiness: A complete, digital record of every care episode to fulfill CMS requirements.
3. Reduced Administrative Burden: Clinical staff freed from manual logging and barcode scanning.
4. Audit-Ready Documentation: Clean, structured data to support faster payer reviews and fewer denials.
5. Faster Reimbursement: Accurate documentation streamlines coding and billing workflows, accelerating payment cycles.

Your Action Plan: 3 Steps to Prepare for the CMS TEAM

With a few months before TEAM begins, the time to act is now. These steps will ensure your organization is not only compliant but also positioned to succeed under bundled payments like TEAM.

• Evaluate your current workflows. Identify gaps in charge capture, inventory tracking, and documentation.
• Engage perioperative and finance teams. Coordinate between departments for success.
• See Snap&Go in action: Contact us to disucss how AI-powered automation can prepare your hospital for TEAM success.