Pioneering Value-Based Patient-Centered Care in Mental Health

Dr. Ujjwal Ramtekkar(second from the left) speaking at the 2025 Behavioral Health Business VALUE Conference In New Orleans, LA.

Redefining Value-Based Patient-Centered Care in Behavioral Health

As the health care industry shifts toward value-based care, behavioral health must evolve alongside it —aligning success not just with financial metrics, but with long-term patient outcomes, engagement and overall well-being. This shift requires ongoing collaboration and shared learning from leaders across the behavioral health industry.

LifeStance Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Ujjwal Ramtekkar, recently joined industry leaders at the 2025 Behavioral Health Business’ VALUE Conference in New Orleans to discuss how behavioral health organizations can move beyond traditional financial metrics and focus on patient-centered, outcome-driven care.

During the Redefining Behavioral Health: The Path to Value-Driven, Patient-Centered Care panel, Dr. Ramtekkar shared how LifeStance is shifting the focus from cost reduction alone to sustainable patient engagement, improved clinical outcomes, and care models that integrate behavioral and physical health for whole-person care.

These conversations are critical as the industry works toward a future where behavioral health is prioritized, measured effectively, and financially supported in ways that drive better patient outcomes.

Below is a transcript of Dr. Ramtekkar’s panel remarks, offering a closer look at how LifeStance is shaping the next generation of behavioral health care.

Editor’s note: The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Moderator: How have you made progress on value-based care contracting in the last year, and could you give an example at your organization?

Dr. Ramtekkar: We’ve been talking about it for a long time. I’ve spent the past decade at the intersection of behavioral health and different types of value-based care arrangements, ranging from pay-for-performance to full risk models. At LifeStance Health, we don’t have a one-size-fits-all [approach] because of the scope and the scale that we have. One approach that we’re taking, which I call a little bit radical, is redefining value from a financial term to a clinical outcome and engagement term. A couple examples that we have are financial alignment and our clinical model alignment with the quality measures, engagement and outcomes. So, with that, we have some straight up pay-for-performance models with some of the regional payers…and we have clear metrics that are focused really on the longitudinal engagement and the quality metrics that we are designing. Think about it: scale matters in these types of areas with payers. When we are thinking about over 550 centers and about 7,400 full-time clinicians, that needs a systemic shift. And that’s where we are really moving towards to set the foundation for the next generation of outpatient behavioral health, value-based care models.

Moderator: What are key quality outcome measures that you’re looking at and used in measurement-based care that have actually demonstrated that strongest correlation with cost savings?

Dr. Ramtekkar: One thing that we are looking at just from the concept of value is the goal of our value-based care thinking is as much a reduction of suffering as it is a reduction of cost or spending, right? And so therapeutic alliance is a great way. The way to operationalize it, and the way we are doing it, is engagement and sustainability. We found that if somebody is engaged in their outpatient work within the first 90 days of initiation of treatment, that predicts their longer-term outcomes, and we pair it with the standardized tools to actually showcase the improvements as well. It’s not enough to think about somebody’s improvement in their health or weight loss because they enrolled in the gym. They have to go to the gym and work out, and we have to measure their overall outcome. And so that’s where we’re thinking about as well. We’re not only looking at the successful linkage to our initial services for treatment initiation. We’re tracking their overall engagement over time very aggressively, in the first 90-day critical period, and then also making sure that we are doing data-driven pivots in their treatment plans based on the symptom signals that we see from the measurement-based care part.

Moderator: Given the lack of progress toward value-based care and behavioral health, should we not reconsider the goal and redefine success?

Dr. Ramtekkar: One of the key challenges right now when we talk about value-based care and behavioral health is not considering that it’s a continuum — not just of the severity spectrum, but actually the services. If we are being measured against the HEDIS (Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set) measures for inpatient care, it’s never going to work for outpatient care. We’re never going to be successful. There is an opportunity for rethinking these measures by segment and then coming up with the unified, well-rounded measures, because otherwise, everybody has their own set of benchmarks, their own set of how they want to be reported, and it’s an administrative nightmare for provider groups to go there. There’s definitely a good opportunity for the payers and the providers to come together.

Last night, I had gumbo for the first time in my life. And I was like, what is it about gumbo that I like? I kept thinking about this this morning, as well. We can put all of those things together to make gumbo, but what makes a really good is a dash of something. And I think in our case, it’s a dash of accountability from both sides, which sometimes is lacking and an area we can work on.

Moderator: What is the true North Star around value-based care in mental health? What does it look like in practice? And for the providers, what are the red and green flags to you when you’re looking at contracting?

Dr. Ramtekkar: Green flags are jointly determined often in this space, particularly at scale. One thing that we really get excited about is whenever there’s a conversation about the quality of care and the outcomes – because ultimately, that is the North Star for behavioral health in outpatient or inpatient settings. Are patients getting better? If they do, then the dollars will follow, and the savings will follow as well.

Any time we have some level of confidence that we will be supported in driving the quality through well-versed, well-rounded, clear metrics and KPIs that also includes the outcomes, we get excited about those things. Otherwise, it becomes more of a routine operational and utilization, outdated KPIs that really doesn’t help the patient in general. Because ultimately, what we see is the more patients are engaged in an outpatient setting, the more they’re going back to their care providers, and the better they’re getting. They’re not going to the hospital; they’re not going to the emergency rooms and the overall cost of care shrinks in the long term. And that’s a win for all parties: the patients, the providers and the payers.

Moderator: We have a lot of savings on the physical health side for behavioral health care. At the end of the day, do value-based care contracts need to be integrated with physical health outcomes, or will some contracts remain in behavioral health only? LifeStance has integrated care partnerships with women’s health companies among others. Does this play into this?

Dr. Ramtekkar: Yes, without question. We somehow treat head and body as two different “billing” departments. They’re not. I think we have an opportunity for value-based care to connect all of it. Depression drives diabetes. Anxiety drives emergency department visits. Untreated anxiety and depression leads to really severe perinatal outcomes. We talk about million-dollar babies in the NICU. They are the direct results, sometimes, of untreated behavioral health concerns for pregnant women. Ultimately, we are focused on not just the screening part, but also the referral and successful linkage pieces of that. And then we have been very closely working with a large women’s health group for women’s mental health, and large primary groups, where we could either do the early identification and treatment or provide the segway into longer-term care people because we are all working on the same patient. The challenge there is interoperability and data sharing. That is a tough nut to crack that we all have to collectively solve.