West Health partners with NCQA. HEALTHCARE: Multi-Year Initiative Develops Behavioral Health Quality Measures June 24, 2026 LA JOLLA - Local healthcare nonprofit West Health is reimagining behavioral health treatment through a new partnership with the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). The multi-year initiative led by the organizations will align payers and providers around a core set of behavioral health quality measures in order to streamline care and improve patient experience. "When you think about how American healthcare ranks compared to other developed countries, we definitely lead on the innovation side. I'm talking about medical devices, technology, drugs," West Health CMO Zia Agha said. "When it comes to healthcare delivery, we are not the best... The work West Health does is bring the innovation model to healthcare delivery." Within the first three years of the partnership, West Health will develop, test and validate a set of quality measures across care settings and payer environments. The vision is for those tested standards to be implemented on a national level. "We're really excited about this partnership," said Julie Siebert, NCQA Assistant Vice President of Behavioral Health. West Health was selected as NCQA's West Coast partner for this initiative and will lead implementation alongside NCQA as it expands across the country. Gary and Mary West founded West Health in 2006 after selling their stake in the tech-driven communications company they founded, called WATS Telemarketing. The couple has contributed over $700 million to the foundation's work over the last 10 years, Agha said. West Health is comprised of the Gary and Mary West Foundation, West Health Institute and West Health Policy Center, which is based in Washington, D.C. The organization's primary focus has been healthcare for older adults. Behavioral health has become a more central focus in recent years. Pivotal time for beahavioral health. Coming out of the pandemic, the mental health burden nationwide skyrocketed. Both Siebert and Agha said they observed that trend firsthand. "One in four Americans has some sort of mental health or brain health condition today. There's a tremendous need," Agha said. "We saw that need through our engagements." Most patients present their initial mental health complaint through primary care, which does provide some care for behavioral health conditions, whether through screenings or prescriptions. Agha said, however, that level of care is not as well-organized as it needs to be. "The primary care system is neither supported nor incentivized to provide that level of care," he said. "Traditionally, mental health has been carved out as its own domain, almost separate from physical health. There's a major need to bring these two areas together, because from a patient's perspective, it's one body." The key driver to provide a more streamlined, effective level of care is to create a measurement framework. Agha explained what that framework would look like in practice for behavioral health. "I'll use the example of when you go see your doctor for high blood pressure or diabetes," he said. "They have specific numbers they use for diagnosis, but as they start treating you, they also track those numbers to see if you're getting better. "That does not universally exist for mental health," Agha continued. "While there's a long history of measurement frameworks, tools and questionnaires, they're not fully adopted." Multi-Year Initiative with national reach. One of the challenges preventing adoption is that there isn't a major incentive, in terms of payment, for clinicians to demonstrate that they are screening, identifying and treating patients with mental health conditions to a target. The measures developed by West Health and NCQA aim to bridge that gap. "Ultimately, the hope is we will demonstrate to the payers what they are asking for - to show them the data - which then will allow them to provide better reimbursement for patients," Agha said. "That helps patients access care but also helps the primary care system and providers get better billings, so they can continue to provide that level of care." West Health and NCQA have already been researching, developing and building policy frameworks for their set of measures for over six months. Soon, the partnership will be launching those measures in over 100 clinical sites throughout California. That first set of implementations will allow the partnership to demonstrate that they can effectively measure and track conditions, show patient improvement and, hopefully, provide better reimbursement. Siebert said that their work with West Health is the first step in a nationwide rollout. Once their measures are proven, NCQA will look for additional partners to join the effort in the central and eastern regions of the U.S. This kind of initiative is important because behavioral health conditions impact people in every area of their life, whether personally, professionally or recreationally, Agha said. "All of this is in service of our goal of improving the cost, quality and access to these critically needed services," Agha said. "We strongly believe that the primary care and integrated care settings have a huge opportunity to serve this patient population alongside specialists." Born and raised in San Diego, Madison takes great pride in local storytelling. Her coverage at the San Diego Business Journal includes tourism, hospitality, nonprofits, education and retail. An alumna of San Diego State University's journalism program, she has written for publications including The San Diego Union-Tribune and The San Diego Sun. At the 2024 San Diego Press Club awards, Madison was recognized for her exemplary profile writing. She was also a speaker for the 2023 TEDx Conference at Bonita Vista High School. When she's not working on her next story, Madison can be found performing music at a local restaurant or on one of San Diego's many hiking trails.

West Health launches initiative to scale integrated Mental Health care in Primary Care settings nationwide. SAN DIEGO, CA, UNITED STATES, June 22, 2026 / EINPresswire.com / - West Health, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization focused on healthcare and aging, has published a new analysis titled" Accelerating Mental Health Integration in Primary Care: From Implementation to Sustainable Impact," outlining the organization's work to bring evidence-based mental health care into primary care at scale and establish a national standard for measuring its quality. The article opens a new series examining mental health care in America and draws on real-world implementation with three strategic partners: Northwestern Medicine, the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, and the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). The case for action is significant. Thirty-three million Americans are living with depression or anxiety severe enough to require treatment. Research from West Health-Gallup Center on healthcare in America shows that roughly 7 in 10 Americans want mental health addressed in primary care, yet many report these conversations do not happen consistently. According to West Health, the gap is not a lack of effective treatments, but how care is organized. The Foundation: Collaborative Care Model West Health's approach is grounded in the Collaborative Care Model (CoCM), developed at the University of Washington and validated by more than 90 randomized controlled trials. CoCM embeds behavioral health directly into primary care teams and has demonstrated clinical results, including reducing depressive symptoms at twice the rate of usual care, improving patient engagement, and reducing unnecessary emergency department use. The model also carries a financial case. Studies show savings from reduced acute care utilization can exceed program costs within the first year, with longer-term savings of $3,000-$6,000 per patient annually. To put that model into practice at scale, West Health launched the Northwestern Medicine West Health Accelerator alongside Northwestern Medicine and the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute in 2024. The collaboration now spans 80 clinics, more than 500 primary care physicians, and a patient panel of more than 500,000 people. What Implementation Is Revealing After a full year of operating CoCM across Northwestern Medicine primary care practices, West Health reports that clinical evidence alone does not drive adoption; operational infrastructure and strong system leadership also have a role. Key barriers include billing complexity, unclear payer coverage for CoCM codes, consent requirements that create friction at the point of referral, and Medicaid attestation rules that suppress referral volume. Dashboard and registry development also took roughly twice as long as anticipated, underscoring the technology investment required to scale integrated care models. Defining a National Measurement Standard A central focus of the initiative is closing a critical gap in behavioral health: the absence of a consistent, shared framework for measuring what high-quality integrated mental health care looks like. Without that clarity, even proven models struggle to demonstrate their value, justify investment, or sustain funding. To address this, West Health is partnering with NCQA to develop a standardized core set of behavioral health quality measures, currently being tested across more than 100 provider groups and 5 million patients in multiple states. Northwestern Medicine serves as the implementation partner, connecting real-world care delivery with national measurement efforts. Payer coalitions and national partners are also being convened to ensure broader alignment and adoption. The analysis frames quality measurement as the bridge between innovation and scale. Without shared definitions of success, integrated care remains optional. With them, it becomes expected, measured, and sustained. Policy, Workforce, and Technology as Enabling Levers West Health researchers identify three additional levers required to scale integrated mental health care: policy reforms that remove adoption barriers, workforce strategies that extend the reach of clinicians, and technology that enables data sharing, workflow integration, and population-level management. Quality measurement, analysts argue, is what connects these levers and translates effort into measurable progress. More than 33 million Americans with unmet mental health needs are not waiting for new discoveries, but for a system organized to deliver care. Establishing a national approach to measurement is a critical step in building that system. "Accelerating Mental Health Integration in Primary Care: From Implementation to Sustainable Impact" is now available on the West Health website. About West Health Solely funded by philanthropists Gary and Mary West, West Health is a family of nonprofit and nonpartisan organizations, including the Gary and Mary West Foundation and Gary and Mary West Health Institute in San Diego and the Gary and Mary West Health Policy Center in Washington, D.C. West Health is dedicated to lowering healthcare costs to enable seniors to successfully age with access to high-quality, affordable health and support services that preserve and protect their dignity, quality of life, and independence. Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. News Deli do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.