NatCon27: April 12-14, New Orleans
The National Council for Mental Wellbeing holds NatCon27 on April 12-14, 2027 in New Orleans. It is the largest gathering of behavioral health leadership in the country, and the operational and payment content runs deeper than the clinical track. Sorso is not an exhibitor, sponsor, or speaker at this event. This is an independent prep guide for behavioral health practice owners.
The CFO read
Behavioral health owners are usually clinicians first, and the most common thing we find is a practice where two clinicians appear equally productive on session count and are far apart on contribution once licensure, payer mix, and no-shows are applied. That analysis takes an afternoon and it changes hiring, scheduling, and which payers you keep. Do it before New Orleans, and the payment sessions will read as a checklist rather than a lecture.
— Stanislav Sukhinin, CFA · Founder, Sorso
Why this matters for your bottom line
Behavioral health revenue is unusually sensitive to payer mix. A practice weighted toward Medicaid and one weighted toward commercial can look identical on volume and land in completely different places on margin.
Staffing is the cost base, and licensure level drives it. What a session bills depends on who delivered it, so the mix of psychiatrists, psychologists, licensed clinicians, and associates is a financial structure rather than a scheduling detail.
No-shows hit behavioral health harder than most specialties because the capacity is a clinician hour that cannot be resold. Practices that have not measured the rate by clinician and by payer are usually absorbing more than they think.
Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic status, value-based contracts, and grant funding each change the revenue model rather than just adding to it. Owners weighing them need the underlying unit economics first.
What to look for
Payment and policy sessions on Medicaid rates, CCBHC economics, and parity enforcement
Workforce sessions covering clinician compensation models, supervision ratios, and associate-level staffing
Measurement-based care and value-based contracting, and what payers actually reward
Integration models with primary care and what the billing looks like in practice
Telehealth policy and its reimbursement, which drives a large share of behavioral health volume
Operations sessions on intake, waitlists, and no-show reduction
Financial prep checklist
Review these before you go.
Break revenue per clinician hour out by licensure level rather than treating clinicians as one pool
Calculate your no-show and late-cancellation rate by clinician and by payer, and price the lost hours
Map payer mix against contracted rates and find which payers sit below your cost per session
Review your intake-to-first-appointment interval, because that is where referral revenue leaks
Separate grant and contract income from fee-for-service so you can see what the clinical operation earns alone
Model what a shift toward associate-level staffing does to both margin and supervision cost
What it costs to send someone
Registration is the line everyone budgets first. It is rarely the one that decides whether the trip was worth it.
Registration
The National Council has published dates and city and opened an interest list. Rates for 2027 are not out, so budget from what you paid last time rather than an assumed number.
Coverage and lost production
Three days out of a behavioral health practice is three days of clinician hours that do not come back, and if the owner also carries a caseload those sessions get cancelled rather than covered. That is the real cost line, and it is larger for a solo or small group than the travel.
Who else travels
NatCon draws leadership teams rather than individuals. A clinical director and an operations lead alongside the owner triples the travel and takes the people who would otherwise be covering.
What comes back as a deduction
IRS Publication 463 allows the travel deduction for a convention where “your attendance benefits your trade or business,” on the ordinary rules for travel away from home. Meals are generally limited to 50% of the unreimbursed cost. Keep the agenda with the receipts, and confirm the treatment with whoever signs your return.
No rates are quoted here. The organizer had published none when we last checked this page against their site on 10 August 2026, and travel is yours to price for your own dates anyway. The point of the list is that the two lines owners leave out, coverage and headcount, are the ones that decide the real number.
Before NatCon27, get your own numbers straight
Walk in able to check every benchmark on the slides against your own numbers. Three ways owners start with us:
Mental Health Practice Accounting & CFO
Built for behavioral health economics
Per-clinician productivity, payer mix, and group-practice P&L — for mental health owners. From $2,000/mo.
Explore your specialty →Accounting
Healthcare-specialist accounting
Books done right by people who understand clinic finance. Starts at $2,000/mo.
Explore Accounting →Free Assessment
A financial checkup before you go
Four minutes. See where your practice stands so every session is measured against your own numbers.
Take the assessment →Going to NatCon27?
Tell us, and we will look at coming to meet you.
Stan does not have a ticket booked for this one yet. If enough clinic owners want to sit down there, that is what decides it. Register interest and we will confirm either way well before the dates — no obligation, and we will not add you to a mailing list.
Register interest in meeting →
Founder of Sorso and a CFA charterholder. Before Sorso, Stan spent 19 years in corporate finance at institutions including UniCredit and Société Générale — managing a $450M loan portfolio and making senior partner at a major mezzanine lender by 29 — then built a fractional CFO firm exclusively for outpatient healthcare clinics.