For over a decade, I was on the wrong side of this industry.
Following a five-year stint in an exceptionally dysfunctional and culty Troubled Teen Program and then a prolonged stay in Europe for my over-education, I found myself working in business development at several (often private-equity backed) treatment programs. Every representative had a monthly quota, including me and the other directors. It didn't matter what the situation was — if you missed your number, you got written up. Miss it again, and you were out. The message was clear: if you couldn't keep beds filled, your career in mental health was finished.
I once brought this up with the company's Chief Marketing Officer. I suggested we rethink our KPIs, partly because of high staff turnover and partly because some of our actions felt morally and legally questionable. She stared at me as if I'd said something offensive and told me my only job was to get people in the door.
That was never the job I wanted. I wanted to help point people to the proper mental health resources, not feed people through the now sprawling for-profit treatment industrial complex.
At the 2026 NATSAP conference, I said this openly: business development in behavioral healthcare today is often not just wasteful, but actually harmful. The audience reacted strongly. Many people took it personally, and several felt it necessary to defend themselves as "good actors."
But, to my surprise, quite a few people quietly told me afterward that I was right.
One of those people was Eshan. We started scheming together that week, which led me to join Perspectives Health as their Chief Growth Officer.
What does the system choose to pay for?
In most areas of medicine, things are pretty straightforward. A patient is evaluated and diagnosed by a medical doctor who then recommends the next step in care. Practices grow based on their outcomes, reputation, and research. Referrals come from other doctors.
Behavioral healthcare has somehow flipped that logic.
In much of the industry, growth depends on who controls the referral stream. Programs don't compete on patient outcomes; they compete on sales and marketing. Business development reps with strong networks often earn higher base salaries than most experienced therapists and social workers, and their bonuses are directly tied to the number of admissions they close.
But business development is just the tip of the spear. Call center-based admissions departments that resemble something more like a scene from The Wolf of Wall Street, with digital advertising budgets that would make an automotive franchise blush, and more private equity money than you can shake a stick at.
This all creates a system that openly rewards keeping people in treatment longer instead of helping them get better. Young people with good insurance are moved through different levels of care — residential, step-down, sober living — that seem like progress but are rarely questioned until the money runs out. Housing is added to the bill, and the care pathway aligns more with the payment structure than with the patient's needs.
To us, this is just body brokering with better branding, and it's particularly harmful because of what's at stake.
More than 40% of Americans live in areas with a shortage of mental health professionals. We lose 70,000 people to drug overdose a year. We can't afford to lose clinicians, yet we burn out and push out the good ones while the system rewards the wrong things.
What we actually want to change
Perspectives Health's goal is bigger than just giving clinicians a few hours back.
We want to change what behavioral healthcare pays for and move this field toward value-based care, where success means helping people get well, not just keeping beds full.
The real question isn't "how do we get more heads in beds?" It's "how do we make sure the right person gets the right care for the right amount of time, and that the clinic providing that care succeeds?" Sometimes that means fewer admissions and longer, appropriate stays. Other times, it means discharging someone who is ready. Either way, the clinics that do right by patients should be the ones that succeed.
We're building an ecosystem that stands against this type of body brokering. We give clinics that provide real care the tools to out-compete those that rely on sales tactics. If you deliver genuine clinical care, we make sure you get paid for it, that your documentation is solid, and you don't lose out to clinics with bigger business development teams.
This field also needs clear, independent standards for what counts as medically necessary care, free from financial influence, with regular check-ins to see if someone is actually building the skills to live well outside the system. We intend to shape and establish those standards.
How we do it
Our software is just the tool, not the mission itself.
Perspectives creates AI agents that handle and automate the heavy administrative work clinics face.
Our flagship product, Reclaim, helps clinics with insurance approvals by reviewing every chart, identifying gaps that could lead to denials, emailing clinicians to help them fix issues, and quickly generating complete, cited utilization-review packets. This means more approved days of care, fewer denials and clawbacks, and more time for clinicians to spend with their patients. We work within the EMRs clinics already use, meet all privacy and compliance standards, and offer a money-back guarantee so that we're risk-free for clinics.
No software can solve addiction, and no AI agent can replace a clinician working with someone in crisis. That work will always require real people making a difference in their communities. Our job is to help those people keep their doors open, get paid for the care they give, and succeed.
That's our mission. The rest is about putting it into action, and nobody is better at that than us.
— Dr. Corey Jentry, Chief Growth Officer