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Boulder Care, the Portland startup utilizing telehealth to deal with folks with substance use dysfunction, has raised $36 million in new funding.
The main inflow of money comes as Boulder Care has established itself as a viable remedy choice for people who find themselves hooked on opioids or alcohol. However there’s extra to do than simply assist sufferers shift from brick-and-mortar clinics to the corporate’s app-based program.
Boulder founder and CEO Stephanie Sturdy mentioned it’s vital to grasp how telemedicine options examine to establishment remedy.
“How can we be sure that we’re not perpetuating a number of the issues that had been damaged concerning the system earlier than simply by bringing them into the tech mannequin?” Sturdy advised GeekWire, including that Boulder goals to consider structural adjustments that must occur to enhance the standard of care. “That’s actually what we’re centered on,” she mentioned.
Boulder employs physicians, nurse practitioners, peer restoration specialists, social providers assist and extra as a part of a multidisciplinary care workforce. They work alongside a tech workforce centered on product, design and engineering. Worker depend has grown to 100.
Began nicely earlier than the pandemic in 2017, Boulder bought a lift through the well being disaster when the federal authorities made a public well being emergency declaration and waived the requirement for an in-person go to for suppliers to prescribe Suboxone (Buprenorphine), a medicine that Boulder makes use of to deal with adults hooked on opioids.
“That has simply modified a lot about how nicely we perceive this modality for delivering this care,” Sturdy mentioned. “There’s so many proof factors for the way this is usually a higher expertise for sufferers and for his or her clinicians.”
Boulder depends closely on well being plans for reimbursement — greater than 95% of its enterprise — as a result of 85% of its sufferers are under the poverty line and a pay-out-of-pocket mannequin is just not possible. In 2020, the corporate partnered with Premera Blue Cross.
Boulder is at present set as much as ship care in 15 states, with sufferers primarily in Washington, Oregon and Ohio. The startup plans to make use of the brand new funds to triple the scale of its care workforce and develop its skill to deal with folks in a number of new markets, “working as shortly as we are able to to deal with the urgency of this disaster,” Sturdy mentioned.
Since its final financing, Boulder has served a number of thousand sufferers with opioid and alcohol use issues, grown income by greater than 10X, and launched with about 20 enterprise prospects, resembling Regence and Anthem, and employers, resembling Comcast and Hewlett-Packard.
That progress comes as different startups are bracing for or have already been affect by an financial downturn within the U.S., suspending fundraising, freezing hiring or shedding staff.
“An financial downturn sadly solely expands the necessity for [substance use disorder treatment],” Sturdy mentioned. “Joblessness, despair, isolation and dependancy are all interconnected, making America’s present local weather a really difficult one for the general public well being disaster Boulder exists to resolve.”
Sturdy, who received the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award on the 2021 GeekWire Awards, was a Forbes 30 beneath 30 honoree in well being care in 2019 and has a background in enterprise capital investing and consulting round well being care and know-how.
Boulder has raised about $50 million thus far. The Sequence B traders included Qiming Enterprise Companions (US), Goodwater Capital, and Laerdal Million Lives Fund, in addition to repeat traders First Spherical Capital, Greycroft, Tusk Enterprise Companions and Gaingels.
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