This article is sponsored by Inperium. As behavioral health and human services providers face mounting workforce, regulatory and financial pressure, many are rethinking how support functions are structured behind the scenes. Apis Services is helping organizations ease that burden through shared infrastructure models that strengthen operations without pulling focus from care delivery. In this Voices interview, George Contos, CEO of Apis Services, shares how integrated back-office support, network collaboration and economies of scale can help providers build more resilient, sustainable organizations in 2026 and beyond.
Behavioral Health Business: What core experience shaped the way you view behavioral health and human services today?
George Contos: What has shaped my view is how much is expected of mission-driven organizations, often with very limited infrastructure supporting them.
The children, adults and families supported by behavioral health and human services organizations are often dealing with very complex issues. But the organizations providing the frontline work face enormous operational burdens and challenges: staffing, compliance, reimbursement, technology, insurance, finance, reporting, legal and risk management.
Mission and infrastructure can’t really be separated. If the back office is weak, the mission feels it. If leaders spend too much time on administrative issues, they don’t have enough time to focus on quality, outcomes, growth, staff development and the people they serve.
A recent example that reinforced this for me was Inperium’s affiliation of RHD toward the end of 2024. RHD is a large, longstanding, multi-state organization serving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and behavioral health challenges. When RHD joined the Inperium Constellation, it was losing approximately $500,000 a month and its viability was in serious doubt. Today, RHD is generating a surplus of approximately $1 million a month.
That kind of turnaround doesn’t happen because of one person, one department or one support function. It required RHD leadership, programmatic focus, discipline, difficult decisions, Apis’s back-office support and Inperium’s broader involvement. Apis was an important part of the infrastructure solution, but the turnaround was the result of coordinated work across the full organization.
The RHD experience underscores my core point: strong infrastructure gives mission-driven organizations room to stabilize, improve and grow.
How can shared infrastructure models, like those offered by Apis Services, help behavioral health and human services providers reduce administrative burden while maintaining high-quality care delivery?
Shared infrastructure allows providers to focus their leadership time and organizational energy on care delivery, quality, staff, outcomes and community impact.
Every behavioral health and human services organization has to manage an administrative load, and none of it is optional. Core back-office services can become overwhelming, especially for organizations already dealing with workforce shortages, reimbursement pressure, regulatory complexity and rising costs.
Apis helps organize those functions at enterprise-level scale for affiliates within the Inperium Constellation. The goal is to support the affiliate without interfering with its mission so that its leaders no longer need to solve every back-office issue by themselves.
When shared infrastructure works well, it creates capacity. Program leaders can spend less time fighting administrative fires and more time focusing on the people they serve. Apis creates real value by helping the whole organization become more stable, more focused and better positioned to deliver on its mission.
How does centralized back-office support — such as HR, finance, compliance, risk, insurance, legal, and IT — enable providers to focus more on client outcomes amid staffing shortages and growing regulatory demands?
Centralized support gives organizations access to deeper expertise, better systems and more consistent processes than many of them could realistically build alone.
A community-based provider may have talented people, but not the scale to maintain specialized depth in every administrative function. Through Apis, affiliates draw on a broader support platform with stronger financial reporting, more consistent HR support, better benefits administration, improved technology, more coordinated risk management and stronger compliance.
Weak back-office systems create distraction and risk and pull leaders away from quality, workforce development, supervision, clinical operations and client outcomes. They make it harder to see problems early, make informed decisions and respond quickly when conditions change.
Apis isn’t about centralization for centralization’s sake. Its purpose is to create a stronger foundation underneath the work so the organization behind that care is stable and well-supported.
How can collaboration within a larger network improve access to data, technology, and best practices for organizations facing operational and financial pressure?
One of the biggest advantages of a constellation model is that organizations do not have to deal with issues in isolation.
If one affiliate is facing a workforce issue, reimbursement challenge, compliance question or operational problem, chances are another organization in the Inperium network has dealt with something similar. Our model creates the opportunity to share knowledge, compare approaches and avoid reinventing the wheel.
It gives the constellation a better platform for data and technology. A standalone organization may know that it needs stronger reporting, dashboards, improved cybersecurity, more integrated systems or better data visibility, but may not have the resources to add those functions. Through a shared model, those investments are made at a broader scale and applied across multiple affiliates.
Collaboration is about creating a structure where experience, data and best practices move across the network in a disciplined way to help affiliates make better decisions, identify risk earlier and build on what’s working well elsewhere within the constellation.
What roles do economies of scale play in helping smaller or community-based providers remain sustainable as costs rise and workforce challenges persist?
Economies of scale matter because the costs to operate a high-quality human services organization continue to rise.
Insurance, technology and labor are more expensive. Compliance expectations continue to grow. Cybersecurity risk is real. Recruiting and retaining people is harder. Many providers are operating in reimbursement environments that are constricting and unpredictable.
Scale does not solve every problem, but it gives organizations options. It improves purchasing power, reduces duplication and supports better systems.
But scale is a tool, not the mission itself. Scale makes organizations more durable, more efficient and better positioned to serve people over the long term. The goal is to preserve what makes each organization valuable while giving it access to stronger enterprise-grade infrastructure for sustainability. For many smaller providers, that access can be the difference between simply keeping the lights on and having the capacity to make strategic decisions for the future.
How can integrated support systems strengthen workforce retention and development across behavioral health organizations struggling with burnout and high turnover?
Workforce retention is not only about compensation. It’s also about making employees feel supported, giving managers the tools they need and creating a career path in the organization that employees can see and pursue.
Integrated support systems can help with that. Stronger HR support, clearer policies, better benefits, more consistent training, improved recruiting, stronger onboarding and better leadership development all affect the employee experience.
In human services, people are often promoted because they are excellent clinicians, direct-support professionals or program leaders. But that doesn’t automatically mean they have the tools, management training or infrastructure they need to lead teams in a complex environment.
Apis helps build more structure around those leaders. When infrastructure is stronger, people spend less time dealing with avoidable frustration and more time on meaningful work, which has a real effect on morale, retention and leadership development.
Workforce stability affects care. Organizations that operate with more consistency create a better environment for the people receiving services.
Zooming out, what will separate behavioral health organizations that build resilient, scalable support systems in 2026 from those that continue to struggle under operational and workforce pressure?
The organizations that are most resilient understand that mission and infrastructure must be in lockstep.
To me, there is a real difference between viability and sustainability. Viability means being able to operate day to day; sustainability means having the stability and resources to be strategic.
Behavioral health and human services are not going away. Needs for those services are growing and becoming more complex. But mission alone cannot sustain an organization. Providers need strong systems, good data, disciplined financial management, workforce strategies, compliance support, technology that helps the work and the ability to adapt.
As today’s regulatory and funding environment becomes more challenging, organizations that are reactive instead of proactive will encounter obstacles that will ultimately become insurmountable. Solving one issue at a time, without structure or scale to get ahead of mounting pressures, strains viability.
The stronger organizations build durable platforms to support their mission. That’s Apis’s role within Inperium. Apis supports the affiliates; it does not replace them. The affiliates keep their mission, identity, leadership, governance and community connection. But with stronger enterprise-grade support behind them, they are better positioned to stabilize, grow and continue serving their communities.
That distinction will become even more important. The organizations that can combine local mission with enterprise-level support will be in a much better position to navigate workforce pressure, financial volatility, regulatory complexity and continued demand for services. Those are the ones that will achieve future growth and long-term success.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Inperium is a nonprofit supporting organization that strengthens human centered services providers. These organizations keep their mission, identity, and independence while gaining the scale and infrastructure to do more with every dollar, every leader, and every community they touch.
Apis is a wholly owned subsidiary of Inperium that provides controlled employer functionality and back-office services exclusively to affiliates within the Inperium Constellation. Apis Services delivers core administrative support—including Financial Services, Human Resources, Insurance, Legal and Risk Management, and Information Technology—while program leadership, governance, and strategic decision-making remain the responsibility of each organization. www.inperium.org.
The Voices Series is a sponsored content program featuring leading executives discussing trends, topics and more shaping their industry in a question-and-answer format. For more information on Voices, please contact [email protected].