Assistance program
Achieving Healthcare Efficiency through Accountable Design (AHEAD) Model
$34.0 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Health and Human Services, Department of
- Assistance
- Cooperative Agreements
- CFDA number
- 93.968
- What it does
- The Achieving Healthcare Efficiency through Accountable Design (AHEAD) Model (referred to as “AHEAD†or the “AHEAD Modelâ€), is a voluntary, state-based alternative payment and service delivery model. It focuses on preventative care, empowering patients, protecting taxpayers, and increasing choice and competition. The AHEAD Model will test a flexible framework that includes statewide or sub-state accountability targets for: • All-payers and Medicare fee-for-service cost growth. • Primary care investment. • Population health outcomes.
- Who benefits
- All Medicare FFS beneficiaries in the state or region that meet eligibility criteria (e.g., residents in the state for a minimum defined period of time) will be included in the all-payer and Medicare FFS TCOC growth and Primary Care Investment Targets, and statewide population health and quality measures and targets. Beneficiaries are eligible to be aligned to a hospital or primary care provider if during the alignment look back period the beneficiary lived in the participating state and were covered by both Part A and Part B of Medicare.
- Who applies
- Application to the NOFO will be open to all 50 US states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico
- Authorized by
- Social Security Act, section 1115A
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments