New model gives organized labor a more active role in defining behavioral health quality, directing members to high-performing care, and using independently validated outcomes to strengthen accountability and value. 

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The Allied Trades Assistance Program (ATAP), in partnership with ERPHealth, today announced the launch of the ATAP High Performance Network (HPN), positioning it as America’s first labor-led, outcomes-based behavioral health network built around independently validated provider performance.

The initiative represents a shift in how organized labor can purchase and manage behavioral healthcare. Rather than relying primarily on access, utilization, and claims data to evaluate care, the HPN gives ATAP and participating health and welfare funds greater visibility into whether members are engaging in treatment, improving over time, and receiving care from providers able to demonstrate measurable results.

The network brings together behavioral health providers, measurement-based care, digital engagement, peer navigation, independent outcomes measurement, and value-based payment strategies within a common operating model.

Its objective is straightforward: help members get to the right care faster, understand whether that care is working, and give high-performing providers a credible way to demonstrate the value they deliver. 

Moving From Access to Demonstrated Performance
A defining feature of the HPN is its requirement for standardized, third-party validated outcomes measurement.

ATAP selected ERPHealth to provide the independent measurement infrastructure supporting the network. Rather than relying solely on provider-reported performance, ERPHealth enables participating organizations to measure engagement, clinical progress, and outcomes through a standardized framework that can be evaluated across the network.

That creates a common performance language among members, providers, labor organizations, employers, healthcare purchasers, and payers.

For providers, the model creates an opportunity to distinguish quality through demonstrated results. For healthcare purchasers, it provides greater visibility into the value being generated by behavioral health spending. And for members and their families, it creates another layer of accountability around one of the most consequential healthcare decisions they may make.

Ken Serviss, Executive Director of the Allied Trades Assistance Program, said: 

“Behavioral healthcare is entering a new era where access alone is no longer enough. Our members deserve care that is measurable, coordinated, and focused on helping them return to healthy, productive lives.

“We partnered with ERPHealth because independent, third-party validation is what makes an outcomes-based network credible. The ATAP High Performance Network demonstrates that organized labor can lead the way by building an accountable system that benefits members while recognizing providers that can demonstrate exceptional care.” 

Organized Labor as a Healthcare Innovator
The HPN also reflects a broader evolution in the role of Taft-Hartley health and welfare funds.

Collectively, labor organizations and their benefit funds represent significant healthcare purchasing power. The ATAP model demonstrates how that purchasing power can be used not only to negotiate access and price, but also to establish clearer expectations around quality, measurement, accountability, and outcomes.

The launch comes as healthcare purchasers, policymakers, and payers increasingly emphasize evidencebased care, measurement-based treatment, transparency, and payment models that reward demonstrated performance.

Rather than waiting for that transition to occur, ATAP is putting the infrastructure into practice.

Gordon Simmons, Founder of The Forge Group and Senior Strategy Advisor to ERPHealth, said: 

“Organized labor has a unique opportunity to help shape what comes next in American healthcare because it sits at the intersection of members, employers, providers, health plans, and communities.

“Under Ken’s leadership, ATAP is moving beyond simply purchasing behavioral healthcare and demonstrating what it looks like to actively organize a system around quality and measurable performance. The HPN creates infrastructure that connects people, providers, technology, navigation, measurement, and payment—and gives us the ability to determine what is working and build from it.” 

Building a Model Designed to Scale
The ATAP High Performance Network is designed to serve as more than a single network initiative.

Its common measurement and operating framework creates the foundation for additional Taft-Hartley funds and high-performing behavioral health providers to participate over time without requiring each organization to build its own outcomes infrastructure.

As the network develops, independently validated performance data can support more sophisticated member navigation, provider differentiation, network design, value-based contracting, and other strategies intended to improve both clinical and economic performance.

ATAP and ERPHealth expect the model to provide a foundation for expansion throughout the Mid-Atlantic and potentially into additional labor markets nationally.

The broader objective is to demonstrate that behavioral healthcare can move beyond measuring how much care was delivered toward answering a more important question:

Did it work? 

And organized labor intends to help lead the way in answering it. 

CONTACT: Rebecca Pirillo, becca@erphealth.com

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SOURCE ERPHealth