This founder wants to solve the opioid and mental health crisis — without compromising for investors

The US has both an opioid crisis and a mental health crisis, with the two overlapping in ways that make treatment a challenge.

American Treatment Network CEO Matthew Sullivan founded the Havertown, Pennsylvania-based company in 2018 to address the opioid and mental health crises by emphasizing treatment that integrates treating both addiction and mental illness by prioritizing the inpatient care that may follow an emergency room visit with accessible, ongoing outpatient care. 

Sullivan, who has spent 30 years in the healthcare business, including Fortune 500 leadership, came face-to-face with the challenges of the behavioral health sector in 2008 when he had the opportunity to be involved with two unnamed startups he described as disruptive to the industry.

“I really got a front row seat to two things — the opioid crisis, and the mental health crisis that was sweeping across the country,” Sullivan told Technical.ly.

Integrating opioid addiction and mental health treatment, along with inpatient and outpatient care, has produced results: Its data shows that at one clinic where American Treatment Network (ATN) served 400 people last year, the company connected 87% of the patients to care within 24 hours. 40% of those did not need inpatient treatment — and, without ATN’s outpatient services, would likely not have had access to continuing care.

“The vision was, let’s create a best-in-class model,” Sullivan said. “Let’s offer it to everybody, regardless of their ability to pay. And then, ultimately, the value we will see is better health outcomes, meaning people are sober. People are returning to work. They’re living productive lives.” 

Ultimately, he said, not only will ATN’s integrated services help people recover, it will also lower overall healthcare costs by reducing more expensive inpatient care.

Intervening in the emergency room 

ATN has four locations in Pennsylvania and Delaware, including near the hospitals of partners Trinity Health and Crozer Health, which is in the process of closing its Delaware County hospitals. At this point, it serves about 1,800 patients a month. 

Proximity to hospitals is important, Sullivan said, “the front door to addiction treatment, nine times out of ten, is the emergency room.”

Emergency rooms in many communities see a lot of opioid and mental health patients who essentially use the emergency room as a primary care doctor, he said. ATN can support providers in emergency rooms by helping to initiate treatment and continue it on an outpatient basis after they leave the ER.

“People are going into crisis and when they relapse, it’s not because they haven’t learned good skills as an inpatient, which is only really 30 days,” Sullivan said. “They’re relapsing because they’re not connected to an integrated outpatient program that can handle all their needs,” whether it be mental health treatment, methadone treatment or case management housing. 

ATN developed its partnership with Crozer Health when the health system closed its Delaware County drug and alcohol treatment centers in 2022. It referred all of those patients to ATN, Sullivan said, “and then, as we worked hand in glove with them in the emergency room and their physician practices, we were really able to help grow our business.”

And, he notes, it is a for-profit business. It is based on a model known as value-based care, which focuses on quality, performance and patient experience. 

“Ultimately, we believe that as value-based care grows, where we do more contracting in a value-based environment, ultimately we will become more profitable,” Sullivan said. “But being in the medical industry, clinical excellence is our number one driver. We want to help people get better.”

In order to avoid having to answer to investors who may not have the same priorities, Sullivan has kept outside funding to a minimum.  

“I knew when I started my own entrepreneurial journey that I wanted to bootstrap it, because while it’s tougher to get established, you can retain control for much longer,” he said. “I’ve seen where folks have forgotten about the patient.”

They took in friends and family investors and some venture capital, most recently a $500,000 deal with Ben Franklin Technology Partners in 2024, according to PitchBook. Now, as the startup is poised to scale, they’re looking to private equity investors. 

“We’ve built the platform, we’ve built the model, we have the outcomes, and now we believe that we’re better positioned to have that conversation with private equity, because ultimately you’re going to need that type of money to scale the model,” Sullivan said.

Battling bias toward recovery treatment

The idea that behavioral health is not on par with physical health is an issue that continues to challenge access to treatment for opioid addiction and mental health.

“We’re getting better, but Medicaid needs to be supported,” Sullivan said.

With the future of Medicaid under the current administration currently unknown, many current and future ATN patients are at even greater risk. But, Sullivan stresses, people impacted by the opioid and mental health crises are not only in poor and under-resourced communities.

“A lot of folks seem to think that this is somebody else’s problem,” he said. “You’ve heard of NIMBY — ‘not in my back yard.’ Well, this is not your backyard. It’s in your living room. It’s not just the Medicaid population. It’s across all demographics, all ethnicities, it’s hitting everybody equally.”