Scott Zeller, MD is Vice President for Psychiatry at Vituity; Lead Physician Consultant and Founder of EmPATH Consulting, a division of Vituity’s Inflect Health: assistant professor at University of California-Riverside School of Medicine; Past President of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry; Past Chair of the National Coalition on Psychiatric Emergencies; and former Chief of Psychiatric Emergency Services for the Alameda Health System in Oakland, CA, where he developed the “Alameda Model.” He has authored multiple textbooks, book chapters, and peer-reviewed articles, has lectured in-person on every continent on Earth except Antarctica, and is known as the co-inventor of On-Demand Emergency Telepsychiatry and the creator of the EmPATH Unit (Emergency Psychiatry Assessment, Treatment and Healing Unit) model for behavioral health emergency care. He led Project BETA (Best Practices in the Evaluation and Treatment of Agitation), which produced guidelines that have revolutionized the care approach to agitated individuals around the world by changing the focus from coercive containment to compassionate de-escalation. He was awarded the 2015 USA Doctor of the Year by the National Council for Behavioral Health, the 2019 California Hospital Association Heerman Award for making a landmark contribution to improving California healthcare; in 2020 he received the HCD-10 award for being influential in healthcare design from Healthcare Design Magazine, and in 2024 was recipient of the University of California-Riverside Healthcare Innovation Award. This year he is recipient of the 2026 Center for Healthcare Design "Changemaker" Award, the highest honor at the International Planning, Design and Construction Summit.