It depends on the provider at issue.Hospitals, for example, receive bundled payments via a prospective payment system or PPS. (Medicare employs PPSes in numerous care settings, but the inpatient hospital PPS is one of the more refined systems). For inpatient care, for example, Medicare payments are set using the Medicare Severity-Adjusted Diagnosis-Related Group system. In very brief terms, Medicare assesses how much it costs hospitals to prcare for a given diagnosis - say, a pneumonia hospitalization - then adjusts the resulting payment based on the severity of the patientu2019s condition and other complications, like age and comorbidities. The theory is that, on average, the PPS payments that a hospital receives will cover each patientu2019s care, and as an additional benefit, the bundled payment will princentives for hospitals to avoid providing more care simply to receive more payments.Doctors, however, are paid under Medicareu2019s physician fee schedule, or PFS. The PFS is a traditional fee-for-service system, where providing additional services means the doctor is paid more. As you might imagine, this is imperfect from policymakersu2022 perspectives, but attempts to bundle payments for physicians have proven to be tremendously complicated.Medicare providersu2022 payments are authorized by Congress and implemented by the federal government via regulations. The actual payments are typically made via electronic transfer and (I think) are made every two weeks. Medicare is among the most prompt of health care payers, but while thatu2019s beneficial to providers, itu2019s also a bit of a downside when it comes to anti-fraud efforts.