In the latter half of 2025, behavioral health leaders are concentrating on three pivotal themes — expanding access, embracing innovation and shoring up financial and operational resilience — as they strive to deliver more equitable, efficient and patient-centered care.
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: What are the top strategic priorities you’re focusing on for the remainder of 2025?
Rachel Dalthorp, MD. Executive Medical Director of Specialty Services at LifeStance Health (Scottsdale, Ariz.): One of our strategic priorities is continuing to expand access to procedural-based services like TMS and Spravato for difficult-to-treat depression. With increasing awareness, consensus guidelines recommending early intervention and expanded FDA approvals and payor coverage, growth is expected to continue.
Our focus is on increasing clinician and patient education and scaling procedural-based services like TMS and Spravato to ensure they’re accessible, safe and consistent across our centers. By expanding access to these specialty offerings, we can deliver more personalized, patient-centered care and give individuals greater autonomy in selecting the treatment approach that aligns with their needs, ultimately improving outcomes for some of the most complex and debilitating cases in mental health.
Nick Stravros. CEO of Community Medical Services (Scottsdale, Ariz.): Our plan is to open about 10 clinics per year. Because each year’s openings stack on prior cohorts, the impact is cumulative, and we must continue scaling operations accordingly. The main constraint is talent: hiring, training, and retaining top people becomes harder at scale, so we’re continuously improving our people processes.
Departments across the organization are continuously piloting AI solutions. We’re continuing to develop our consumer app and have an active RFP for a new EMR—a significant, cross-functional effort.
With ongoing growth in census, de novos, and enabling infrastructure, cash management is a daily discipline. Elevated interest rates, uncertainty around Medicaid (which funds ~75% of our patients), and rising input costs reinforce the need for tight forecasting and disciplined capital allocation.
Jenny Welling-Palmer. Chief Strategy Officer at Thriveworks (Lynchburg, Va.): We are constantly seeking ways to reduce friction in their workflows, create greater opportunities for peer collaboration, uplevel their skills through learning and development and build a strong and well-matched client caseload. We know that taking care of the clinician ultimately has the biggest impact on the care clients receive and on their overall results.
We’re also focused on broadening our impact through health systems and primary care partners, providing scalable solutions for integrated mental health services within primary and specialty care settings. In parallel, we’re continuing to refine our clinical strategy, honing in on the measurable outcomes that best demonstrate value and impact on clinical results.
Paul Smith. CEO of Psychiatric Medical Care (Brentwood, Tenn.) Psychiatric Medical Care is focused on expanding access to behavioral health services in rural communities, strengthening integration of behavioral healthcare across hospital settings, and helping more families through our new adolescent mental healthcare programs. We’re advancing data-driven quality initiatives, building strategic partnerships for sustainable growth, and leading efforts to reduce stigma, ensuring more patients receive timely, effective mental healthcare.
Matt Peterson. President of Behavioral Health Division, Universal Health Services (King of Prussia, Pa.) We are currently testing multiple electronic patient-rounding platforms, leveraging innovative solutions to enhance patient check-ins and safety. The feedback during several pilots has been positive and encouraging such that we intend to expand the pilots as we evaluate the right platform for our patient population. As a partner to Hippocratic AI and similar other tech companies, we are looking at how we can use AI to efficiently enhance Intake, accelerating the admission process into our facilities for patients.
We continue to successfully launch the electronic medical record (EMR) across the division. With that expansion, we have access to a single, unified platform to better inform care decisions and improve patient safety. At the end of the day, we are using multiple streams of technology solutions to drive operating efficiencies, enhance patient safety and deliver growth.
