Associate Director - Brain Health Policy

GEDA success story | Kaiser Permanente Southern California. Preventing falls through standardized care and system-wide accreditation August 20, 2026 Serving an aging population. Emergency departments (EDs) across the United States face pressure to care for a rapidly growing population of older adults. To address this challenge head on, Kaiser Permanente Southern California (KP SCAL) partnered with West Health to pursue Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditation (GEDA) across all 15 EDs in its network. Focused on fall prevention. Early on, KP SCAL identified fall prevention as a key regional priority. Through a coordinated effort to adopt data-driven care and foster shared accountability, KP SCAL lowered the risk of falls across the region by 22%. Steps to Success * Designated physician, nurse, and regional clinical champions * Embedded the Hester Davis (HD) Falls Risk Screening Tool into triage workflows * Optimized EHR to track real-time screening completion and interventions * Ensured timely interventions for positive screens through a standardized fall-prevention bundle and clearly defined safety behaviors * Provided fall prevention education to patients and caregivers in the ED - and before admission or discharge * Gave sites flexibility to adapt new practices to existing workflows Standardizing care and delivering value. Backed by strong executive support, KP SCAL achieved GEDA accreditation across all its EDs, turning evidence-based care into standard practice. In terms of implementation, they exceeded a 90% completion rate when screening adults aged 65 and older at triage. Similarly, 90% of patients who screened positive for fall risk received at least one intervention in the ED. These outcomes aligned with broader organizational goals around patient safety and reducing preventable harm. More importantly, the work helped ensure older adults in the region received consistent quality care, while positioning KP SCAL to meet the CMS Age-Friendly Hospital Measure. Read the full case study. Explore all the details of the KP SCAL success story. By pursuing GEDA accreditation, your hospital or health system can meaningfully improve care for older adults while meeting broader organizational goals. Learn more about the advantages of GEDA accreditation and how to apply. Discover how GEDA strengthens CMS compliance. GEDA care processes embed core tenets of the CMS Age-Friendly Hospital Measure into ED workflows. Explore how this helps improve geriatric emergency care while meeting national standards. Get the latest GEDC updates and insights straight to your inbox

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.