Chief Medical Officer (CMO)

Human Resources•Franklin, TN

5d•Remote

About The Position

Alsos Behavioral Health is building a focused, multi-state inpatient and residential addiction-treatment platform centered on ASAM 3.7 and ASAM 3.5 levels of care. The company is focused on high-acuity substance-use-disorder patients, including Medicaid and safety-net populations that require strong access, sound medical judgment, disciplined operations, and reliable documentation. Alsos is not trying to become a broad behavioral-health platform. The company is focused on building a repeatable model for launching, stabilizing, and operating inpatient/residential addiction-treatment facilities with strong medical standards, safe access, credible compliance posture, and scalable provider infrastructure. The Chief Medical Officer will be the senior medical operations executive for Alsos. This is not a figurehead physician role, a narrow clinical-policy role, or an academic advisory position. The right candidate must be able to translate medical judgment into operating systems, build and manage provider accountability, support fast admissions decisioning, protect patient safety, improve documentation quality, and partner with a high-velocity executive team. The center of gravity is medical operations. Provider-model building is a close second. Clinical quality leadership matters, but the role is not designed for a physician who only wants to review standards from a distance. Alsos needs a builder who can design systems, identify implementation risks, create scorecards, inspect whether the system is working, and drive measurable results.

Requirements

MD or DO with board certification in a relevant specialty and a clean, unrestricted license history.
No current or prior license restrictions, probation, suspensions, unresolved board actions, or disciplinary history that would create risk when obtaining additional state licenses.
Eligible and willing to obtain medical licenses rapidly in Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Arkansas, and Colorado, ideally before start during the notice period.
Meaningful medical leadership experience in multi-site addiction treatment, inpatient/residential SUD treatment, detox, or closely adjacent high-acuity care environments.
Fluency in ASAM criteria, especially ASAM 3.7 and 3.5, or directly comparable experience with willingness and ability to operate at that level immediately.
Demonstrated comfort treating and designing systems for high-acuity Medicaid, safety-net, or similarly complex SUD populations.
Strong understanding of medical documentation, medical necessity, continued-stay support, UR, denial prevention, and how provider notes affect coverage and payment.
Experience supervising, evaluating, or holding APPs/providers accountable in a multi-site or operationally complex environment.
Ability to partner with operations and admissions without becoming a reflexive admissions blocker.
Executive-level communication, sound judgment under pressure, and ability to make decisions quickly with incomplete information.
Operator mindset: builds processes, identifies implementation risks, creates scorecards, inspects results, and drives accountability.
High talent bar: evaluates providers accurately and does not tolerate chronic underperformance.
Practical patient-safety judgment: willing to restrict admissions temporarily when unsafe, but always with a plan to rebuild capacity safely.
Access-oriented: believes high-acuity Medicaid patients deserve clinically appropriate access supported by strong systems.
Business fluency: understands census, provider productivity, documentation, UR, denials, payer risk, and operational execution.
Low-ego executive presence: can collaborate with operations without turf protection or academic distance.
Clear communicator: translates medical concerns into practical operating decisions.
MAT-forward, harm-reduction-aware, trauma-informed, and evidence-based.
Comfortable with a high-velocity, entrepreneurial executive environment.

Nice To Haves

Addiction Medicine board certification or equivalent addiction-medicine credibility.
Direct ASAM 3.7 / 3.5 leadership experience.
Experience building or redesigning an internal APP/NP provider model.
Experience separating centralized H&Ps/intake assessments from local rounding and facility integration.
Strong provider network or demonstrated ability to help recruit excellent APPs/providers.
Experience opening, stabilizing, or scaling inpatient/residential addiction-treatment facilities.
Experience in Medicaid-heavy or safety-net treatment environments.
Experience implementing AI-supported documentation, QA, or provider-productivity systems.
Credibility with payers, regulators, or state agencies when medical leadership matters.

Responsibilities

Design, implement, and continuously improve the medical provider model for ASAM 3.7 / 3.5 facilities. Define whether and how centralized/virtual H&Ps and intake assessments should be used, while ensuring local providers own rounding, detox monitoring, treatment-team participation, urgent clinical issues, and facility integration.
Establish provider productivity standards, tools, reporting, and accountability mechanisms that make those standards real.
Define staffing standards by facility, including coverage needs, provider ratios, backup coverage, and PRN pool requirements.
Partner with HR/recruiting to source providers while personally maintaining a high clinical bar for candidate evaluation.
Evaluate APPs/providers with a critical eye, retain strong providers, coach where appropriate, and move quickly from underperformers when needed.
Develop or approve onboarding, training, supervision, and medical protocol expectations for APPs/providers.
Support a fast, clinically responsible admissions model for high-acuity SUD patients.
Build staffing patterns, policies, procedures, QA protocols, escalation rules, and tight reporting that allow Alsos to safely support higher-acuity access.
Treat pre-admission phone screens and record review as useful tools, but not as the default primary gate when in-person assessment is clinically and legally appropriate.
Avoid paralysis by analysis, prolonged speculative risk review, or excessive medical-record requirements that unnecessarily slow access.
Design temporary tighter admission criteria when a facility is not operating at a safe standard, while also defining what must change to safely expand criteria again.
Partner with admissions and operations so patient safety and access are pursued together rather than treated as opposing goals.
Set and approve medical documentation standards for H&Ps, withdrawal management, progress notes, continued-stay support, medical necessity, and level-of-care documentation.
Ensure providers understand and document to ASAM 3.7 / 3.5 criteria in a way that supports clinically appropriate care and coverage continuity.
Partner with UR, revenue cycle, compliance, and operations to reduce avoidable denials tied to medical documentation gaps.
Train providers on documentation expectations and review whether documentation is actually supporting care coverage with no missed days or preventable lapses.
Use data, audits, and provider scorecards to identify documentation gaps and drive correction.
Establish medical standards, protocols, escalation pathways, and quality expectations for detox, residential, and high-acuity SUD care.
Maintain a MAT-forward, harm-reduction-aware, trauma-informed, evidence-based treatment philosophy.
Collaborate with operations, nursing, compliance, and facility leadership to identify patient-safety risk early and correct it practically.
Tell the truth when something is unsafe while bringing an actionable plan to make the system safer.
Support credible medical responses to state, payer, or regulator concerns when physician leadership matters.
Serve as a direct partner to the CEO and a member of the Executive Leadership Team.
Communicate clearly with operators, compliance, admissions, UR, revenue cycle, nursing, facility CEOs, and provider teams.
Balance patient safety, admissions flow, clinical standards, documentation quality, census implications, and provider accountability.
Identify implementation risk before systems fail, then create reporting and scorecards that reveal whether the system is working.
Support facility launches, medical stabilization, provider-model transitions, and organizational growth with practical medical leadership.
Be open to AI-supported documentation, reporting, QA, training, and provider-productivity workflows.
Help evaluate or approve AI-first clinical documentation workflows where provider review, editing, and signoff remain clear.
Use technology and process design to reduce wasted provider time, improve documentation quality, and create better visibility into performance.