Building A New Service Line: The Diagnostic Checklist & Leadership Intervention Playbook

February 26, 2026

1:00 – 2:00 pm ET

Health and human service provider organization executives are under tremendous pressure to manage the sustainability and growth of their organizations, often through new or expanded service portfolios. Growth can bring big rewards or costly failures. After a strategically aligned service line is chosen, the path to success often relies on access to a practical framework for monitoring and assessing whether it is developing the way it should—and what to do when it isn’t.

During this one-hour live presentation, M. Renee Valdez, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Medical Officer, Gulf Coast Center, will share a four-part diagnostic model for service line development, including a comprehensive needs and strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) assessment, guidance on the selection of a strategic framework, a continuous 360° assessment of required financial performance, consumer satisfaction, clinical quality, safety, and growth, and an intervention playbook for course-correction strategies.

Through this framework, executives will learn to spot red flags in strategy, alignment, and culture before they become systemic obstacles to success—and how to intervene to get teams back on track. Dr. Valdez will also emphasize how executives who model curiosity, authenticity, and emotional intelligence achieve better results than those who lead solely through authority or the expectation of compliance.

Key Takeaways For Executive Leaders:

Evaluate behavioral health service line development using a four-part diagnostic framework—architecting, framework selection, balanced monitoring, and active intervention—to identify alignment and spot red flags early.
Implement 360° strategic frameworks that serve consumers, providers, and the organization equally, while maintaining fidelity to the mission under financial or regulatory pressures.
Apply course-correction strategies, including mentoring, role modeling, and developmental coaching, that move leaders from awareness to a mastery that sustains organizational balance.

Featured Speakers

M. Renee Valdez, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Medical Officer, Gulf Coast Center

Dr. M. Renee Valdez is Chief Medical Officer at Gulf Coast Center, a Texas Local Mental Health Authority (LMHA) and Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC), where she oversees evidence-based care for individuals with serious and multifaceted mental health needs. A board-certified psychiatrist with over 20 years of experience, she has dedicated her career to advancing psychiatry and behavioral healthcare in public safety-net settings. Dr. Valdez’s leadership draws on broad clinical and administrative experience. As Director of the Psychiatry Consultation Service at Ben Taub General Hospital in Houston, she partnered with medical and surgical teams to care for patients with complex psychiatric conditions. Later, as Medical Director and Chief Clinical Integration Officer at Lone Star Circle of Care, a Federally Qualified Health Center serving six Texas counties, she led Integrated Behavioral Health services and advanced value-based strategies that improved outcomes—work that continues to inform her approach today. Always eager to learn and apply new insights to improve care, she earned Board Certification in Community Psychiatry through the American Association for Community Psychiatry (AACP) and an MS in Health Care Transformation from the University of Texas at Austin in 2021, together enhancing her expertise in health care operations, finance, and policy and strengthening her ability to impact systems of care. An educator and mentor, Dr. Valdez has taught physicians, medical students, residents, therapists, and nurses, earning the Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P. Faculty Excellence Award for Teaching and Evaluation from Baylor College of Medicine in 2011. Building on her experience and seeking to support others pursuing similar goals, she founded Sol Healthcare Consulting, helping behavioral health organizations implement operational best practices that strengthen their mission and improve care delivery. Alongside her leadership responsibilities, Dr. Valdez remains a practicing clinician, guided by person-centered, trauma-informed, and culturally humble principles—values that define her leadership and commitment to expanding access to high-quality behavioral health care.

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