Over the past decade, Xenco Medical has emerged as one of the most innovative and respected companies in the medical technology sector, earning numerous global accolades for breakthrough innovation, sustainability, and surgical efficiency while building a reputation as a visionary partner to hospitals and surgeons navigating value-based care. Twice named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company and the recipient of two esteemed international awards from the World Economic Forum, the innovation powerhouse has established itself as a forward-thinking global company that seemingly knows where healthcare policy, economics, and clinical practice are heading and designs interdisciplinary technologies to meet that future years in advance. As the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services launches the Transforming Episode Accountability Model (TEAM) across the United States this year, it seems that Xenco Medical has correctly anticipated that future again.
The new mandatory episode-based payment model represents one of the most significant shifts in how surgical care, including spinal fusion, will be financed, measured, and managed over the next five years. Under TEAM, selected hospitals will be accountable not only for the inpatient procedure itself, but for the entire 30-day episode of care, including post-acute services, readmissions, and total Medicare Part A and B spending. For spine programs, this fundamentally changes the economic and operational equation.
In a recent conversation, Xenco Medical Founder and CEO Jason Haider shared how the TEAM model is fueling booming demand for Xenco’s AI-driven longitudinal technology platform and why hospitals are increasingly looking for solutions that extend far beyond the operating room.
For Jason Haider, TEAM is not a surprise, it is a validation of the company’s long-standing belief that healthcare would ultimately move toward longitudinal accountability, standardization, and system-wide efficiency.
“TEAM doesn’t just change reimbursement, it changes the unit of accountability,” Haider said. “Hospitals are no longer being measured on a single procedure in the OR. They’re being measured on the entire episode of care. That’s exactly what our TrabeculeX Continuum technology was designed to support.”
From Procedures to Episodes: A Structural Shift for Spine
Historically, spine programs have focused primarily on optimizing the inpatient surgical encounter, implant selection, OR time, and length of stay. While important, those variables represented only a portion of the total cost and outcome profile for spinal fusion patients.
TEAM fundamentally expands that lens. Under the model, CMS evaluates total Medicare Part A and B spending across the entire episode, including inpatient care, outpatient services, skilled nursing facilities, home health, physician follow-ups, and readmissions. Hospitals are reconciled against risk-adjusted target prices and quality measures such as readmissions, complications, and mortality. For spine programs, this creates a new level of financial and operational exposure.
“Spinal fusion is one of the most complex and variable surgical episodes in medicine,” Haider said. “Implant costs, OR efficiency, discharge disposition, post-acute utilization, and readmission risk all vary significantly. Under TEAM, that variability becomes direct financial risk and AI-driven longitudinal technologies that empower physicians to make a sustained impact on their patient’s rehabilitation become of paramount importance.”
CMS included spinal fusion precisely because it represents one of the greatest opportunities, and challenges, for episode-based care redesign.
The Financial Reality: Why Performance Gaps Matter More Than Ever
Independent analyses underscore the magnitude of the shift. Advisory Board research suggests that more than half of mandatory TEAM participants are projected to lose money under current performance levels unless they significantly improve episode management, with average projected losses exceeding $1 million per facility.
As the program progresses, most hospitals will transition into two-sided risk tracks, exposing them to both upside opportunity and downside repayment risk. Depending on track selection and hospital type, downside exposure can reach up to 20 percent of episode spending.
“The financial stakes are real, and they escalate quickly,” Jason Haider said. “Hospitals can’t afford to think incrementally. They need structural solutions that improve predictability and reduce variability across the entire spine episode, spanning recovery at home.”
Why Longitudinal Technology Is Now Essential
The shift from procedure-based to episode-based accountability is reshaping what hospitals expect from spine technology partners. Increasingly, executives are seeking platforms that support standardization, predictability, and efficiency across the full continuum of care — not just high-performance implants.
This is where Xenco’s TrabeculeX Continuum technology is gaining significant traction. TrabeculeX Continuum is designed as a longitudinal platform that synergistically harmonizes the bone-forming potential of Xenco Medical’s regenerative biomaterials with AI-powered post-surgical rehabilitation throughout the recovery process. Seemingly designed in anticipation of the mandatory CMS paradigm shift, the technology enables surgeons to remotely monitor pain scores, rehabilitation adherence, and motion recovery through AI-driven pose assessment.
“We’ve developed our technologies to capture the entire journey of our patients’ recovery, animated by a mission to dissolve the barriers that typify the otherwise siloed nature of surgical care,” Haider said. “Beyond our other portfolio technologies that address OR efficiency, infection risk, length of stay, and discharge readiness, we tailored the TrabeculeX Continuum to address readmission risk as well, all of which now directly affect episode performance under TEAM.”
It goes without saying that beyond the longitudinal tech encapsulated in the company’s TrabeculeX Continuum, the elimination of traditional reprocessing and sterilization requirements through the company’s composite polymer systems reduce sterile processing department (SPD) burden, labor costs, and operational bottlenecks, factors that often go unnoticed in fee-for-service environments but also become financially meaningful under bundled and episode-based models.
Standardization as a Financial Strategy
One of the central themes of TEAM is reducing fragmented care and encouraging hospitals to invest in redesigned care processes and infrastructure. CMS explicitly aims to improve care transitions, reduce avoidable utilization, and support continuity of care through greater coordination across settings. Standardization is a key lever in achieving those goals.
“In a TEAM environment, variability is the enemy,” Haider said. “Every missed opportunity to bolster recovery post-discharge, every deviation in workflow, every delay, every unexpected reprocessing issue introduces cost, risk, and unpredictability into the episode.”
The TrabeculeX Continuum supports a continuous care model that begins with standardized procedural workflows and predictable supply chain economics, helping spine programs achieve greater consistency across cases and surgeons, but extends into rehabilitation with AI-powered pose estimation protocols. That continuity, in turn, supports more reliable discharge planning and smoother post-acute transitions, both of which are critical to managing total episode cost and reducing readmission risk.
Sustainability and Economics Converge
Xenco Medical has long been recognized for its sustainability leadership, particularly through its sterile, single-use platforms. Under TEAM, those environmental advantages may increasingly translate into financial and operational benefits as well.
Eliminating reprocessing reduces labor associated with cleaning and sterilization, water and energy consumption, sterilization equipment utilization, and SPD congestion and case delays.
“In a fee-for-service world, those savings were often hidden,” Jason Haider said. “Under TEAM, they directly improve episode margins. Sustainability and financial performance are now aligned in a way they never were before.”
For hospital executives facing margin pressure under episode-based payment, that alignment is becoming a strategic consideration.
Why the Mandatory CMS Change is Fueling Demand for the TrabeculeX Continuum
The convergence of TEAM and spine economics is driving a noticeable shift in purchasing and partnership decisions. Hospitals are no longer evaluating technologies solely on implant price or clinical preference. Instead, they are assessing how technologies influence total episode performance. According to Haider, this shift is directly fueling increased demand for the TrabeculeX Continuum platform.
“Hospitals are asking different questions now,” he said. “How does it affect readmissions? How does it affect total cost of care?”
The TrabeculeX Continuum is resonating because it aligns clinical, operational, and financial priorities into a single, AI-driven longitudinal platform, helping hospitals manage the full spine episode, not just the procedure.
Preparing for the Next Phase of Value-Based Spine Care
Although some hospitals may begin in upside-only risk tracks under TEAM, downside risk will become the norm over time. CMS has structured the model to transition participants into two-sided risk, increasing financial exposure and intensifying the need for proactive care redesign.
“Upside-only is temporary,” Haider said. “The hospitals that wait will be reacting under pressure. The hospitals that invest now in longitudinal infrastructure will be positioned to lead.”
For spine programs, that means adopting technologies and workflows designed for accountability, predictability, and long-term performance.
A Blueprint for the Future of Spine
TEAM is widely viewed as a blueprint for CMS’ broader value-based strategy. Many industry leaders expect episode-based models to expand to additional procedures and specialties in the coming years. For Xenco Medical, the model reinforces a long-term strategy centered on longitudinal care, standardized workflows, and system-wide efficiency.
“The surging demand we’re seeing for the TrabeculeX Continuum is a direct response to accountability becoming real,” he said. “Hospitals need platforms built for the future of spine care, and that future is episode-based, longitudinal, and accountable.”
As spine programs navigate one of the most significant reimbursement shifts in decades, technologies designed to support the full continuum of care are moving from optional to essential. For many hospitals, that reality is making longitudinal platforms like the TrabeculeX Continuum not just attractive, but mission-critical.
