Northwestern Medicine West Health Accelerator: Scaling the Collaborative Care Model Across a Health System

Americans’ self-reported mental health ratings have fallen to a six-year low, and more than one in five U.S. adults lives with a mental health or substance use condition — half of them without adequate treatment. The Collaborative Care Model (CoCM) addresses this gap by integrating mental health treatment into primary care, pairing a patient’s primary care provider with a behavioral health care manager and a psychiatric consultant. The model is proven to reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, extends one psychiatrist’s reach to as many as eight times more patients, and can return up to $6 in long-term health care savings for every $1 invested. Yet despite Medicare coverage, fewer than 1% of U.S. primary care sites bill for it today.

Launched in fall 2024, the Northwestern Medicine West Health Accelerator supports and studies the scaling of CoCM across Northwestern Medicine’s entire adult primary care network. As of October 2026, the program has grown to more than 80 clinics, received over 11,500 patient referrals, and enrolled more than 4,700 patients. Insurer claim denials have fallen from 17% to 7%, and 87% of patients pay less than $50 per month. Clinicians describe mental health needs as more common and more acute than ever, and say the care manager outreach and psychiatric consultation at the heart of CoCM are what make effective treatment possible between primary care visits.

This one-pager, developed by West Health and the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, highlights learnings from the first two years of the Accelerator, including the barriers preventing practices from adopting the model: upfront startup costs, administrative burden around consent and billing, monthly patient cost sharing, and uneven Medicaid coverage across states. It outlines policy priorities to address each — including the COMPLETE Care Act’s temporary increase in Medicare payment for new CoCM programs, simplified consent and billing rules, reduced patient cost sharing, and aligning state Medicaid coverage with Medicare — so that more health systems can start and scale collaborative care.