Issue #9: Medicare Payment Mechanism for AI Agents, Open Evidence Usage and AI Governance

What you get every issue: Three curated healthcare AI stories with my take. Companies doing the work. Skills and techniques worth knowing. And opportunities worth pursuing. Three things worth your time this week: 1. MEDICARE JUST CREATED THE FIRST PAYMENT MECHANISM FOR AI AGENTS IN HEALTHCARE CMS ACCESS model launches July 5. 150+ companies accepted. 10-year program paying for AI care coordination between clinical visits — outcomes-based, not activity-based. The headline: Everyone's calling it a "pilot program." The reality: When Medicare creates a payment mechanism, private payers follow within 18-24 months. This is infrastructure, not a pilot. My take: The economists at CMS who designed this are former VCs and founders. The math only works if you're running lean, AI-first operations. That's not an accident — that's the filter. Read it: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/12/medicares-new-payment-model-is-built-for-ai 2. 65% OF U.S. PHYSICIANS ARE USING AN AI TOOL MOST PATIENTS HAVE NEVER HEARD OF OpenEvidence is used in 27 million clinical encounters per month. Free. Ad-supported. Built by a Harvard PhD student. Why it matters: This happened without a single hospital CIO signing a contract. Physicians adopted it on their own because it solved a real problem. The pattern: Every transformative clinical technology has followed this path — individual physician adoption first, institutional integration second. EHRs were the exception, not the rule. My take: The disclosure gap is the next regulatory flashpoint. 65% physician adoption and most patients have no idea. I am also seeing a rise of interest from the entrepreneurial realm of direct to consumer. Full story: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/openevidence-ai-doctor-medical-physician-login-app 3. ONLY 59% OF HEALTH ORGS TRACK THEIR AI AGENTS' PERFORMANCE That's not a typo. As AI agents proliferate, most organizations have no standardized process to know if they're working. But here's the nuance: This is exactly how EHR adoption went. Rapid deployment, governance crisis, then HITECH-style policy intervention. Why this matters for builders: The governance infrastructure layer is about to become mandatory, not optional. The companies building AI observability and audit tools for healthcare are 18 months ahead of the market. These activities require structure like structured documentation and someone to think through these requirements. Source: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2026/05/17/bonus-features-may-17-2026 COMPANIES DOING THE WORK Pair Team — AI-first chronic care company accepted into CMS ACCESS; access to 500K Medicare patients; longevity companion AI named Flora. Anomaly Insights — AI payer intelligence platform analyzing billions of transactions to give providers "the receipts" in contract negotiations. Just raised $17M. Knit Health — UC Berkeley spinout training the first Large Clinical Behavior Model on actual clinical decisions from 130M patients. Not what doctors say — what they do. AI TOOLS WORTH KNOWING OpenEvidence — AI medical knowledge platform used by 65% of U.S. physicians. Free, evidence-linked, HIPAA-compliant. The AI that's already in your doctor's pocket. XCaliber Health — Agentic OS for healthcare providers. Orchestrates scheduling, refills, and referrals across all systems. 8M+ chart updates/day. Google Health Coach — Launching globally May 19. AI health coaching via Fitbit and the revamped Google Health app. First major consumer health AI deployment at Google scale. WORK & PARTNERSHIP OPPORTUNITIES Head of AI Product (Chronic Care) — CMS ACCESS cohort companies — Peak hiring window NOW for AI PMs who understand outcome-based payment design. AI Governance Lead — Major health systems — New role category emerging as ambient AI governance gaps surface. Clinical background preferred. VP Clinical AI Products — Ambient AI vendors — Abridge, Ambience, Suki all scaling; nursing expansion requires clinical workflow expertise. WHAT I'M WORKING ON: The CMS ACCESS model is the payment architecture. Watching closely. Building agents for were we manage the agents on a separate machine and working with some interesting tools. Using Obsidian as a file cabinet. Creating a free report that for members, "2026 The State of Health AI". — Victor Reply to this email if you want to discuss any of these. I read every message. Share Yuuki Edge with colleagues and friends • Healthcare AI Intelligence • yuukiedge.com