UCHealth Partners with Avant-garde Health to Strengthen Surgical Performance Under CMS TEAM

AURORA, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Avant-garde Health, the leading provider of solutions for improving perioperative quality and efficiency, is working with UCHealth to align its teams and strengthen performance under the CMS Transforming Episode Accountability Model (TEAM), Medicare’s mandatory bundled payment model for five common surgical episodes.

“Providing the highest quality care and best outcomes is always our top priority,” said Danielle Andrade, UCHealth vice president of care continuum integration. “Avant-garde is providing our care teams and operational leaders with essential cost and efficiency data so we can make decisions quickly and consistently across our hospitals […] It helps us focus on where we can improve care and reduce costs for our patients.”

UCHealth and Avant-garde have moved from planning to execution, bringing claims and clinical data together so leaders can govern bundle performance, set shared targets, and act before CMS reconciliation. The shared data have enabled clinical and operational teams to align around the highest-impact opportunities to improve care and succeed under TEAM.

“In most systems, surgeons, finance, and operations are working from different numbers. UCHealth has brought those leaders together around a single source of episode-level truth and a shared set of targets, which is the hardest and most important part of TEAM,” said Derek Haas, CEO and Founder of Avant-garde Health. “Getting that alignment in place before the program matures is what will set their results apart.”

UCHealth will speak at Avant-garde’s 2026 Bundled Payment and Care Transformation Summit, August 18 and 19 at the Harvard Club of Boston, joining health system executives, clinicians, and Harvard Business School faculty. Registration and details are available at summit.avantgardehealth.com.

About UCHealth

UCHealth is a nonprofit health system with 37,000 employees and 15 acute-care hospitals across Colorado, Wyoming, and western Nebraska, anchored by University of Colorado Hospital on the CU Anschutz Medical Campus, the region’s only adult academic medical center. To learn more, please visit uchealth.org.

About Avant-garde Health (AGH)

Avant-garde Health provides surgical care analytics. Combining claims and clinical data, Avant-garde helps hospitals identify opportunities to improve the cost and quality of surgical care. Its work, grounded in value-based care research from Harvard Business School, has been featured in the Harvard Business Review article “How One Hospital Has Succeeded in a World of Bundled Payments.” To learn more, please visit avantgardehealth.com.