CEO Update 266
Scott Dziengelski to Start as NABH’s Next President and CEO on Monday, April 13
NABH is pleased to announce Scott Dziengelski will begin serving as the association’s new president and chief executive officer on Monday, April 13.
Dziengelski brings nearly 20 years of experience in healthcare policy, advocacy, and coalition-building to NABH. Currently he serves as a consultant with the FDA & Life Sciences team at King & Spalding, where he advocates before Congress and the federal agencies — including the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — for legislative and regulatory issues pertaining to hospitals, drug and device manufacturers, pharmacies, and other healthcare providers.
Throughout his career, Dziengelski has demonstrated a strong ability to create, communicate, and implement strategic policy initiatives while bringing together diverse stakeholders to advance shared goals. His deep understanding of federal policy and regulatory processes will be instrumental in advancing NABH’s mission to improve access to high-quality behavioral healthcare.
In addition to his consulting work, Dziengelski serves as an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where he examines policies and regulations affecting individuals with serious mental illnesses and substance use disorders (SUD), with a focus on quality, access, and outcomes.
Dziengelski is no stranger to NABH. From May 2017 until January 2020, he served as NABH’s director of policy and regulatory affairs, where he helped shape the association’s policy agenda. Dziengelski also brings with him his previous experience as a legislative director in the U.S. House of Representatives and his work with the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over healthcare issues.
“Scott’s extensive policy expertise, leadership experience, and longstanding commitment to behavioral healthcare make him uniquely qualified to lead NABH at this critical time,” said NABH Interim President and CEO Mark Covall, who also serves on the association’s Board of Trustees. “We are thrilled to welcome him back to the association and look forward to his leadership in advancing our priorities.”
Dziengelski earned a bachelor’s degree in public policy from American University and a master’s degree in psychology from Pepperdine University. His contributions to public service and mental health policy have resulted in a Medal of Merit from the United States Capitol Police and the Friend of Children’s Mental Health Award from the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
“I am honored to return to NABH and serve as its president and CEO,” Dziengelski said. “NABH plays a vital role in advocating for policies that expand access to high-quality behavioral healthcare. I look forward to working with our team, members, policymakers, and partners to address the nation’s most pressing mental health and substance use disorder challenges.”
Sen. Cassidy Introduces Bill to Eliminate Medicare’s 190-Day Lifetime Limit
Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chair Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-La.) this week introduced the Removing Medicare Mental Health Impatient Limitations Act to eliminate the Medicare program’s 190-day lifetime cap on psychiatric care services, a longstanding NABH priority.
If passed and signed into law, the bill would remove the existing cap in the Social Security Act and help ensure individuals have complete and uninterrupted access to the mental healthcare services they need.
NABH Sends Comments About Behavioral Health & Healthcare Costs to House Subcommittee
NABH this week submitted a statement for the congressional record as part of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health’s hearing, Lowering Health Care Costs for All Americans: An Examination of the U.S. Provider Landscape.
After highlighting that mental health and SUD are common in the United States, NABH drew the connection between unmet treatment needs and rising healthcare costs.
“Individuals with untreated mental illness incur two to four times higher total medical costs than those without such conditions,” our comments noted. “While timely access to behavioral healthcare can improve outcomes and mitigate costs to the system, the total overall healthcare cost of not treating behavioral health disorders to the healthcare system exceed $290 billion annually in the United States alone.”
NABH also wrote that behavioral health conditions are associated with up to a threefold increase in spending among individuals with otherwise similar physical disease burden. “The impact is greatest among patients with high-cost physical health conditions,” our comments said. “More than half of patients with high-cost medical conditions also have a behavioral health condition, and these conditions are linked to increased medical spending for chronic pain, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.”
Health Affairs Study Analyzes U.S. National Spending on Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Treatment from 2000-2021
A new Health Affairs study concluded that from 2000 through 2021, mental health and SUD nominal spending grew to $139.6 billion from $40.9 billion and mental health and SUD accounted for 4.5% of all medical services spending in 2000 and 5.5% in 2021.
“Our decomposition analysis showed that mental health and SUD spending growth was driven primarily by increases in the number of people receiving treatment (representing 87.3% of the growth) and to a much lesser extent by increases in the cost per case (12.7% of the growth),” the study noted. “However, because disease severity was unobserved, these patterns may partly reflect increased treatment of less severe cases rather than unchanged severity-adjusted treatment costs.”
Johns Hopkins Study Finds Increase in Depression & Suicidal Ideation Among College Students
Results from a recent analysis of health survey data from more than 560,000 U.S. college students show that depression symptoms have steadily increased during the past 15 years, particularly among women, minorities, and students experiencing financial stress.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, McDaniel College in Westminster, Md., the University of Maryland, and other Maryland academic institutions found that the rate of self-reported depression symptoms continued to grow during the 15 years of the analysis period (2007-2022), extending a trend that many other researchers have reported for the past two decades.
Meanwhile, Carol Vidal, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Children’s Center, noted that thoughts of suicide, or “suicidal ideation,” increased across all demographic groups regardless of race, age, gender or financial stress, while reports of other symptoms, such as restlessness and lack of concentration rose most steeply among female, financially distressed and minority students.
Vidal noted that colleges, universities, parents and health care providers can all play a role in addressing differences in mental health indicators by being alert to those differences, addressing underlying stressors among the most vulnerable populations and seeking services when needed.
The Joint Commission to Host Webinar Series on Its Sentinel Event List Next Week
The Joint Commission (TJC) next week will host the first in a series of webinars about TJC’s Sentinel Event List, which the accrediting body announced in January will align with the National Quality Forum’s updated Serious Reportable Events (SRE) list that takes effect on Jan. 1, 2027.
The alignment is intended to streamline safety event reporting and eliminate the need for separate measurement frameworks. TJC’s first webinar will explore the effect of alignment and provide an overview of the SRE technical guidance that will support the 2027 changes.
Click here if you’re interested in registering for the hourlong webinar next Wednesday, March 25 that starts at 1 p.m. ET.
ICYMI: 2026 NABH Annual Meeting Presentations & Photos Available
Following our 2026 Annual Meeting this month, NABH posted presentations from General Session speakers Eric Boles of The Game Changers and Kimberly Brandt from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Author and blogger Neil Pasricha’s presentation is not available to post publicly, and NABH’s other General Session speakers did not use slides during their presentations.
NABH is also pleased to share photos from this year’s Annual Meeting. If you choose to share a photo publicly, please be sure to credit our photographer Chris Ferenzi.
Fact of the Week
In a nationally and state-representative Gallup survey of nearly 20,000 U.S. adults conducted from June through August 2025, roughly one-third of respondents — or about 82 million Americans — said they have made at least one trade-off with daily living expenses to afford healthcare.
For questions or comments about this CEO Update, please contact Jessica Zigmond