The Future Leaders Awards program is brought to you by Behavioral Health Business, a WTWH Media health care brand. The program is designed to recognize up-and-coming industry members who are shaping the next decade of behavioral health, home health, hospice, senior housing and skilled nursing care. To see this year’s Future Leaders, visit https://futureleaders.agingmedia.com/.

Anay Patel, president and COO of Quartet Heath, has been named a 2024 Future Leader by Behavioral Health Business.

To become a Future Leader, an individual is nominated by their peers. The candidate must be a high-performing employee who is 40-years-old or younger, a passionate worker who knows how to put vision into action, and an advocate for those in need of behavioral health services, along with the committed professionals who work across this important corner of health care.

In March, digital behavioral health company Quartet Health promoted Patel to the role of president and COO. The 10-year-old New York-based company called Patel instrumental in steering Quartet Health from a company focused on making referrals to providing mental health care with its own in-house clinicians.

Patel spoke with Behavioral Health Business about his frustrations with the industry’s traditional fee-for-service model, and what else he would like to see change. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

BHB: What drew you to this industry?

Patel: Having a personal affliction in the family. A couple of very important people in my family suffered through substance use challenges and, separately, mild to moderate depression.

At the time I joined Quartet, I was actually coming out of the peak of COVID, where most behavioral health companies saw utilization for their services go up.

So those were the predominant reasons to explore the opportunity. And then it was opportunistic in that the previous CEO of Quartet [Puneet Singh] and I had a working relationship. He was starting his new role as a CEO. And, so, it all kind of came together in a really nice way.

What is the biggest lesson learned since starting to work in this industry?

The way in which services are delivered and paid for are materially behind that of our peers and other specialty services, in particular compared with chronic and specialty care.

Many of the companies that we partner with and talk to and work with, we are all sort of stitched into this fee-for-service world. Empirically, that reimbursement model for behavioral health is insufficient, especially as you look at some of the more acute conditions. The criticality of the services delivered are not remunerated in a way that would create sustainability for the services provided.

There needs to be a better partnership between payer and provider or vendor. Many of our peers in the marketplace see that as well. Whether that’s through more progressive value-based care incentive models, or other alternatives, that needs to move faster. If not, you will see a lot of companies fall out, primarily because they can’t keep with the pace of reimbursement given the cost of the services they’re delivering.

If you could change one thing with an eye towards the future of behavioral health care, what would that be?

Just the way that [behavioral health services] are compensated. I would say that the way in which the services are remunerated today doesn’t meet the cost basis to deliver them.

What do you foresee as being different about the behavioral health industry looking ahead to 2025?

I think you will see fewer providers wanting to engage in traditional fee-for-service models. More and more, you are starting to look at how they can deliver their services and configure their services differently to align with value-based models, whether it is the amount of delivery, all the way through the modalities in which treatment is delivered.

I think the swing to virtual services will slowly swing back to in-person. That’s not to say virtual doesn’t have its place. It certainly does, but we are seeing that trend and I know many of our partners and peers are as well.

In a word, how would you describe the future of behavioral health?

Critical or essential.

The prevalence in which [behavioral health] diagnoses are being evidenced now is materially different than it was even two, three years ago. And so that would lead you to believe that if more and more people are being diagnosed and identified with a behavioral health condition, the need for those services should keep pace.

If you could give advice to yourself looking back to your first day in the industry, what would it be and why?

Be prepared for a slower pace of change. With respect to capital, resourcing, etc., [behavioral health] is 10 if not 20 or 30 years behind other clinical indications.

We in the industry have been fortunate in the last decade, certainly half-decade, for the funding that has gone into the space. However, as it pertains to how a lot of the companies in our peer set continue to operate, we’re very much in a scale-up mode, right? Just because many of the services again are not paid for in the way in which other areas of medicine are.

The pace in which change occurs and progress moves within the space is unfortunately not as fast as any of us would like. Companies like Quartet are trying to figure out how we create an economically viable service and create an enduring company that can continue. That’s a shared responsibility with the payers and vendors.

To learn more about the Future Leaders program, visit: https://futureleaders.agingmedia.com/.