The DEA just announced another 1-year extension of telehealth prescribing flexibilities. We promised to #KeepOurCure and that is exactly what we are doing: protecting access to life-saving addiction medicine.
It takes time for bold ideas to break through and change the status quo. When we said at Boulder Care 7 years ago that substance use disorder can be treated remotely, it was deemed too risky or too complicated. Few believed it was possible. Boulder’s team of extraordinary caregivers have now treated nearly 20,000 people over several million touchpoints.
From one of Boulder's patients:
"The reason I am able to fight against my addiction solely relies on telehealth. If I did not have Boulder Care I just wouldn’t have done it. For a lot of people it’s the discreetness of telehealth that makes it possible for them to get clean and fight their addiction. For me there was no way I was going to admit to my family that I had an addiction to opiates, let alone go into treatment for it. The programs around here to get help would make me travel 45 minutes everyday to get one dose until I built up enough trust (I guess) to get my own prescription. I would’ve never been able to get through this without Boulder Care."
Telehealth is not just a novelty or a stopgap measure. It is a necessity. People all across America depend on telemedicine for their health and well-being.
Thankfully, we are not alone in our fight to ensure telehealth SUD care becomes a permanent fixture of U.S. healthcare. More than 300 leading medical and industry groups, from the American Medical Association to the American Society of Addiction Medicine - ASAM agree that telehealth addiction treatment must be accessible.
While we celebrate this win, we also recognize that this extension is only temporary, and therefore, from our standpoint, insufficient.
Our work continues as only 1 in 4 people who need treatment for substance use disorder currently receive it, and nearly 100,000 Americans die annually due to drug overdose.
Against this backdrop, Boulder will continue to collaborate across state and federal governments to modernize our healthcare system and ensure all patients have access to lifesaving care. Since our founding in 2017, we’ve sought to transform how addiction is perceived, medicine is practiced, and care is delivered. Today, we continue to charge forward defiantly: making our vision a reality for the millions of people counting on us.
— Stephanie Strong, Founder and CEO, Boulder Care
