Chris Botts

Chris Botts is the Director, Value-Based Care within the Professional Satisfaction & Practice Sustainability group at the American Medical Association (AMA). In this capacity, he helps lead AMA’s efforts to advance new models of care delivery and payment that improve the sustainability of physician practices by removing obstacles to patient care and enabling physicians to learn, adapt, thrive, and lead in a rapidly evolving health care environment​. This includes leading AMA’s Value-Based Care (VBC) and Behavioral Health Integration (BHI) Initiatives, which incorporates the BHI Collaborative, a partnership between 12 of the nation’s leading physician organizations focused on catalyzing timely, equitable, and sustainable whole-person care in physician practices.

Prior to joining the AMA, he worked at the Center for Health Policy (formerly known as the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform) at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC where he supported the Center’s payment and delivery reform initiatives including those related to Medicare alternative payment models and health plan innovations. Mr. Botts also worked at the Health Care Reform and Innovation Administration within the District of Columbia’s Department of Health Care Finance designing and implementing new, innovative health care delivery and health IT programs. These programs worked to improve data integration and provide actionable information to reduce health disparities, enhance health care quality and outcomes, and promote wellness in the District. Mr. Botts earned a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Neuroscience with a concentration in Premedical Studies from the College of William and Mary.

2026 Presentation:

Behavioral health integration (BHI) is a team sport—and Arkansas clinicians, community partners, payors, and policy makers all play critical roles in making integrated care a reality for patients. This session will highlight how the American Medical Association (AMA) is supporting such efforts across the country through practical tools, evidence-based frameworks, and real‑world guidance designed to help individual physician practices and health systems accelerate and sustain BHI for their patients. Attendees—from clinicians and administrators to policy and payer partners—will learn how evidence-based implementation best practices, use of virtual care and other digital solutions, and incorporation into value‑based care arrangements can help strengthen coordination, expand timely access, and ultimately improve outcomes for patients across Arkansas.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn about practical best practices and an implementation framework that supports collaboration across clinicians, care management, payors, and community providers in Arkansas.
• Identify actionable strategies for tackling specific critical topics—including pharmacologic treatment, SUD care, and billing/coding—that can be adapted for to strengthen BHI in Arkansas.
• Describe opportunities for leveraging telehealth and other digital tools to expand and accelerate access to behavioral health services, particularly in rural and underserved Arkansas communities.
• Apply key considerations for integrating behavioral health into value based care, including current challenges and opportunities to support more sustainable BHI efforts across Arkansas.