From Cost Center to Revenue Driver: How The Collaborative Care Model (CoCM) is Revolutionizing Behavioral Health in Primary Care

For years, behavioral health service lines have been the financial anchors of healthcare: organizations sinking resources with the hope of breaking even. Measurement-based care (MBC) emerged as a foundation of clinical rigor, allowing behavioral health providers to track outcomes, engage more effectively with patients, and elevate their standard of care. These increments in quality deliver tremendous value for providers and patients alike, but here’s the harsh truth: the traditional behavioral health reimbursement model doesn’t reward quality. Providers are paid the same whether they measure outcomes or not, leaving innovation underfunded and organizations struggling financially.

But the landscape is shifting. Enter the Collaborative Care Model (CoCM). Payers now recognize the value of integrating behavioral health into primary care, offering reimbursement structures that turn what was once a cost center into a revenue-generating engine. Studies demonstrate that for every dollar invested in CoCM, payers can see up to a 6:1 return on investment. Integration isn’t just clinically effective, it’s financially transformative.

Yet the challenge remains: implementing CoCM is complex. Too many organizations aim for the modest goal of breaking even, after years of learning to equate that with “success.” At Mirah, we believe that’s the wrong benchmark. Your objectives should be ambitious: expand access to care, improve outcomes, AND produce the meaningful financial margins that your good work deserves. 

Despite what consultants might tell you, customized EHR workflows alone won’t get you there. Success requires a system designed to measure, manage, and optimize CoCM in real time.

Every day, our customers demonstrate that it’s possible to deliver exceptional behavioral health outcomes and generate profit—yes, the word healthcare often treats like a taboo. When paired with quality care, it’s a tool to extend access to thousands of patients who desperately need support.

Behavioral health doesn’t have to be a financial drain, and “behavioral health profit margins” doesn’t need to be an oxymoron or the punchline to a joke told by your CFO. With CoCM and the right technology, it can be a sustainable, revenue-driving, patient-centered component of primary care. The question is simple: will you settle for breaking even, or will you leverage the opportunity to change both lives and your organization’s bottom line?