American College of Lifestyle Medicine applauds 2027 CMS Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule for its elements supporting lifestyle medicine practice

The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) applauds the 2027 CMS Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule announced today for its inclusion of elements that will support prevention, behavior change and whole-person care delivery.

ST. LOUIS, Nov. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) applauds the 2027 CMS Physician Fee Schedule for its inclusion of elements supportive of lifestyle medicine practice, including a new payment pathway for shared medical appointments (SMAs), greater recognition of health and wellness coaching, telehealth, and longitudinal care. These represent an important step toward payment models that better support prevention, behavior change, and whole-person care.

Lifestyle medicine is a medical specialty that uses therapeutic lifestyle interventions as a primary modality to treat chronic conditions, including but not limited to cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and obesity.  Lifestyle medicine certified clinicians are trained to apply evidence-based, whole-person, prescriptive lifestyle change to treat and, when used intensively, often reverse such conditions. Applying the six pillars of lifestyle medicine—a whole-food, plant-predominant eating pattern, physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, connectedness, and avoidance of risky substances—also provides effective prevention for these conditions.

Lifestyle medicine is often practiced in a SMA model, which is a medical visit with group-based health education and behavioral support. This model of clinician-led, team-based, multi-visit interprofessional group visits addresses time constraints, and enables scalable care delivery. In addition to the physician leader, the team can include professionals such as physician associates, nurses, registered dietitian nutritionists, exercise physiologists, pharmacists, health and wellness coaches, and behavioral health specialists.

The final rule strengthened its original SMA proposal by establishing additional payment for longer sessions, recognizing the time and clinical resources needed to deliver comprehensive, team-based care to patients with chronic conditions, and expands support for health and well-being coaching under general supervision. CMS also strengthened telehealth access and explicitly recognized ACLM's Lifestyle Empowerment Approach for Diabetes Remission (LEADR) as a new quality improvement activity.

ACLM appreciates CMS's leadership in advancing these important policies and looks forward to continued collaboration to ensure appropriate reimbursement for SMAs, support sustainable implementation, and expand access to innovative care models, particularly for Federally Qualified Health Centers, Rural Health Clinics, and other providers serving underserved communities.

"We are delighted that CMS engaged with ACLM on this year's Physician Fee Schedule, including our formal response urging the agency to include lifestyle medicine care models as it redesigns how primary care is paid for," said ACLM President Padmaja Patel, MD, DipABLM, FACP, FACLM, CPE, Lifestyle Medicine Intensivist. "Lifestyle medicine offers an innovative, team-based, whole-person model built around what matters most to patients, one that can treat, and in many cases reverse, the chronic diseases driving most of Medicare's costs. Our goal is for this model to become the standard of care for every patient living with chronic disease. We thank CMS leadership for their engagement and look forward to building on this rule to restore health for our country."

 "On behalf of ACLM's more than 17,000 members, we applaud CMS for taking meaningful steps toward a payment system that rewards not only the management of disease, but the restoration of health," said ACLM CEO John Findley, MD, CPE. "The growing burden of chronic disease is exposing the limits of a healthcare model built primarily to manage illness rather than address its root causes. This rule signals a transformational shift toward better aligning payment with the upstream, comprehensive care patients need. It is one small step in the evolution of payment policy, but an important leap toward a future in which lifestyle medicine is accessible to everyone as part of standard care delivery."

About ACLM® 

The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) is the nation's medical professional society building the infrastructure to scale lifestyle medicine as the new standard of care. ACLM translates evidence-based lifestyle interventions into education, certification, and implementation, equipping physicians, healthcare professionals, and systems of care to treat the root causes of chronic disease. Since 2004, ACLM has trained more than 100,000 health professionals and made more than 1.75 million hours of accredited continuing education available through courses and conferences for physicians and health professionals. With hundreds of institutional partners worldwide, ACLM is helping healthcare move from a system designed to manage disease to one capable of restoring health.

SOURCE American College of Lifestyle Medicine