Value-based accountability in orthopedics is no longer voluntary — it's federal policy. MSKvalue assembles best-of-class musculoskeletal care into one accountable episode: personalize the surgery, measure the outcome, get paid on the value.
For clinicians & ASCs → For patients →CMS has said the quiet part out loud: voluntary models let organizations opt in only when they can win. So the newest models are compulsory — and orthopedics is the tip of the spear.
Mandatory joint-replacement bundle (2026, ~740 hospitals). Hip & knee episodes scored on cost, complications, readmissions, and patient-reported outcomes.
Mandatory ambulatory specialty model — individual-clinician accountability on a peer-benchmarked cost curve. Low-back-pain arm pulls in orthopedic & neurosurgery.
A nationwide expansion of joint-replacement bundled payment. The accountability model is widening, not retiring.
A joint-replacement's cost isn't one number; it's four levers. MSKvalue pulls all four — and custoMED attacks the biggest one, the implant.
Performing TJR in a surgery center runs 30–50% less than a hospital — roughly $10–20K saved per case, with lower 90-day admissions and ED visits too.
The implant is ~50% of a TJR's total cost — the single largest line. custoMED's implant-agnostic, point-of-care personalization sidesteps premium OEM markups and weeks of lead time, at a fraction of the materials cost. This is the metric that moves the story.
Revisions cost ~76% more than the primary — and infection revisions run tens of thousands. Personalized alignment lowers revision risk, so the savings compound over years.
Camera-based recovery and remote monitoring cut readmissions inside the 30-day episode CMS now scores — protecting the bundle and adding RTM revenue.
arthritisrisk.com and jointclass.com run direct-to-consumer campaigns that screen and educate patients, then route them straight into the personalized, ASC-based, custoMED pathway — manufacturing demand for the exact episode that wins the math.
Standard implants and mechanical alignment force every patient's joint into a narrow set of shapes. Real anatomy doesn't work that way. Here is the case for personalization, made plainly.
No two knees, hips, or shoulders are the same. A plan and implant matched to the individual restores their own anatomy instead of averaging it away.
Roughly one in five standard knee-replacement patients report they aren't fully satisfied — often tied to alignment and fit. Personalization is a direct answer to the residual-dissatisfaction problem.
Better fit targets lower revision risk — and revisions are the single biggest episode-cost driver (~76% more than the primary). Under mandatory two-sided risk, avoided revisions are savings the provider keeps.
Made in minutes on installed printers, implant-agnostic, at low capital. Personalization becomes the everyday standard, not a premium add-on for a few centers.
Honest framing: the high-level trial evidence on personalization is still maturing — which is exactly why the founding-surgeon model instruments every case and feeds the registry. The argument today is mechanistic, value-aligned, and patient-centered; the confirmatory data is what we build.
Personalization isn't a black box. Here is the exact path custoMED runs for every case — surgeon-approved at every step, never autonomous.
A CT or scan is uploaded securely and anonymized. No new hardware, no workflow disruption — it connects to the imaging you already run.
The joint is segmented, and the patient's native center of rotation is reconstructed from the deformity-preserved compartment (the lateral side in a varus knee, the medial side in a valgus knee) — reading the answer off undamaged anatomy, not estimating on worn surfaces.
AI plus expert engineers design a patient-specific plan, cutting guide, and implant that replicates that center of rotation across the full range of motion. Implant-agnostic; fits the systems the surgeon already uses.
Everything passes through a surgeon-first viewer. The named surgeon reviews, adjusts, and approves the plan. Attested, never autonomous.
Point-of-care manufacturing on installed printers — not weeks of engineering lead time. In the surgeon's hands in hours.
The personalized implant goes in; recovery is measured with PROMs and remote monitoring and fed to the registry — closing the value-based episode.
MSKvalue doesn't reinvent the wheel; it integrates the best product at each stage of the joint-care episode into a single, measured, reimbursable arc.
Free MSK risk screening turns a population into identified surgical candidates before they ever call.
Evidence-based pre-op and post-op education that scales the "best-in-class" patient experience.
AI personalized joint replacement — patient-specific plan, guide, and implant in minutes, implant-agnostic. ISO 13485 · FDA-cleared. custoMED →
Every case instrumented and benchmarked against the American Joint Replacement Registry — 4.6M procedures, the national standard the mandatory models score you on.
The AI practice OS — coding, prior auth, RTM, and 90-second AJRR abstraction — so the value you create is actually reimbursed. SurgeonValue →
Camera-based recovery tracking that generates RTM-qualifying adherence and functional-outcome data — closing the episode loop. JointCoach →
The path to a better joint now begins online — a symptom search, a free risk check, a night of reading — long before a patient ever chooses a surgeon. Whoever owns that digital front door routes the patient toward personalized care.
Knee or hip pain sends them online. A free joint check meets them there.
Plain-language education shows a plan built for their body is possible.
A calm guide routes them to a personalization-ready surgeon.
The demand arrives at the OR already asking for the personalized plan.
You're now accountable for cost, complications, and outcomes on every joint-replacement episode. MSKvalue is the operating system that lets you land on the right side of the peer curve.
A better joint replacement isn't a bigger hospital. It's a plan built for your anatomy, a team that measures how you actually recover, and care that stays with you from the first ache to full function.
A free check on your joint health.
Know what to expect, before & after.
An implant & plan built for you.
Guided recovery, tracked at home.
Under mandatory two-sided risk, better alignment and fewer revisions stop being a cost and become a return the accountable provider keeps. Illustrative.