Joe Nalley

Healthcare Executive · Founder · Fixer

Still in the room.

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Selected Work
Cadence
Continuation governance for specialty pharmacy.
Curated
Episode-based behavioral health with a readmission warranty.
Caliber
Pre-payment claims verification.
Corridor
Managed governance across pharmacy, behavioral health, and claims.
FORGE
Product lifecycle management for healthcare.
The Pendulum
Why organizations oscillate between rigor and agility.
Published
The Missing Measure: Continuation Appropriateness in Managed Care — Pharmacy Times, April 2026
→
65,234
Patients studied
$9.2M
Returned to payers
200K+
Patients served
6
Clinical books
About
Joe Nalley

It's always the same pattern. Something should exist, nobody's made it, and the economics explain why. So I stay in the gap until it does.

Founder and CEO through acquisition. Built ClearBill, sold it, and the work opened the door to a Fortune 25 payer. I still write code and ship my own sites. The range is the point.

Trajectory
Built
Founded behavioral health and SUD practices in Kentucky, grew to the state's largest online practice in under two years. Opened recovery centers, mental health facilities, a regional hospital from the ground up. 200,000 patients. Took the health system through acquisition, stayed as CEO for 3.5 years.
Sold
Founded and sold ClearBill, a billing integrity platform that returned $9.2M to payers before acquisition. 30,000+ SUD patients managed across the full continuum. The gap was visible from the provider side. The fix had to come from outside.
Now
Staff VP at a Fortune 25 national payer, running six specialty risk books (oncology, MSK, maternity, CHF, autoimmune, dementia). Building Cadence, Curated, and Caliber independently as the Corridor platform.
Value To
Startups
Two companies founded and acquired. 13 locations, $30M revenue, 200K patients, then through the close and three-plus years running it post-acquisition. I've sat in every chair: founder, operator, the person across from the diligence team.
PE-Backed
I've been the operator the thesis depends on. Consolidated multiple service lines into one health system, stood up a hospital from licensing through first surgery, ran the value creation plan through exit. Every company I've launched since has PE-ready unit economics from day one.
Enterprise & Payer
Six specialty risk books inside a national payer. 45M+ managed lives, $75B+ in specialty spend. I redesigned the product lifecycle from scratch and shipped governance the organization actually uses. The org chart is the test, not the whiteboard.
Digital Health
I'm the person your sales team is trying to reach. I evaluate digital health companies from the payer side. I see what gets piloted and what dies in procurement. The data specs, the budget cycle, the internal politics that decide whether your pilot becomes a line item.
Investors & Boards
I can diligence a healthcare deal from the operator's chair. Unit economics, clinical risk, regulatory exposure, payer contracting, and whether the team can scale. I've held the P&L at every altitude from startup through the largest payer in the country.