People are at the center of everything we do at Boulder. Every teammate plays a role in realizing our mission to help people and communities heal from addiction.
We’ve built a company around value-based care, endeavoring to make every patient feel like the most important person to us — never just a number.
It all starts when patients connect with a compassionate person to help them enroll, followed by medical appointments with expert Clinicians and assisting Care Advocates. Peer Recovery Specialists walk alongside, bringing empathy and expertise from their own experience.
We have each other’s backs. Dedicated staff provide wrap-around support. When a patient encounters a roadblock, a Care Navigator or Case Manager swoops in to connect them to housing, medicine, or other resources.
A comprehensive model not only results in better patient outcomes, but in a clinical culture rooted in safety and purpose: We’re able to do what’s right for the growing community of patients who rely on us, without undue burden on any one teammate.
Boulder colleagues work to facilitate health plan relationships and ease administrative tasks on Care Teams so they’re able to practice fully in-network. As a result, life-saving care is affordable to patients regardless of their financial income. Our Community Engagement & Studio teams help people learn about treatment options, while Operations ensures we’re right here when they need us.
Folks are dedicated to protecting safety & privacy, maintaining a high standard of ethics, quality, and compliance, and conducting groundbreaking research that pushes the field forward.
Our Product, Design & Engineering teams are passionate about powering collaborative workflows — and making some of the hardest, most important healthcare jobs a little bit easier every day.
Because of the many administrative and business support colleagues who work tirelessly to keep our organization humming, Boulder is a nimble innovator while providing outsized value in one of the most complex areas of healthcare.
Finally, our People team helps us attract extraordinary talent to support our mission, nurture diverse teams, and build opportunities for growth, learning, and leadership. The heart and talent at Boulder is unmatched, and we’re grateful for this recognition.
– Stephanie Strong
From Boulder Medical Director, Dr. Liz Ryan:
It’s an extremely challenging time for America’s healthcare workers: doctors and caregivers are tired. Feeling overworked, emotionally exhausted, and burned out during the pandemic exacerbated already dire provider shortages. Too much time is burned on tedious administrative tasks, pulling us away from what matters most: treating our patients.
Systems are strained, and breaking under pressure. Addiction specialists are scarce, overwhelmed in the midst of a national overdose crisis. Grief and moral injury abound, on both sides of the patient and provider experience. Who is caring for those who care for others?
When we decided to work in the medical field, we didn’t think it would be this way.
At Boulder, we knew something must change. And we believe the best innovation is borne out of necessity. Everyday, we are working to improve a broken status quo, little-by-little, and build something new, brick-by-brick. In our case, the metaphorical bricks are virtual. Telehealth holds enormous potential for addressing the hard problems of delivering high quality health care in the 21st century.
Flexibility is baked into the practice of telehealth, both for staff and patients, empowering people to find the pace and rhythm that works for them on both sides of the therapeutic relationship, benefiting patients and providers alike. At Boulder, we took the additional step of enhancing that flexibility by creating a Pop-In (“on-demand”) clinic, obviating the rigidity of scheduled visit adherence — a punitive practice in many treatment centers — and increasing provider flexibility to extend or minimize visit time, depending on patients’ unique needs in that moment.
For clinical staff, this means a fundamental departure from a work day divided into frenetic 15-minute blocks. Giving adequate attention to a patient does not require the next person to be stuck waiting, while I worry about their cost of childcare or time away from work. Providers can give patients the attention that’s needed. Patients feel like they’re being heard and seen.
Boulder has treated over 15,000 patients virtually. Most have remained in care for at least one year, and 98% report positive progress in their ongoing recovery. People stay in care here longer than in treatment as usual. I believe that's because we, as caregivers, have the freedom to do what’s right.
For instance, we are not forced to damage the therapeutic alliance by administering unnecessary and excessive urine drug screening. We promote shared-decision making, allowing patients to exercise their own agency and recognize their needs. And we integrate deeply into the communities we serve, partnering with teammates on the ground to understand the unique aspects of each setting in order to tailor our care.
We build teams across all time zones, enabling 24/7 coverage while individual practitioners can confidently close their laptops and be present with their families at the end of the workday.
When a patient loses housing or faces intimate partner violence, in-person, we may never know — or have no way to help. But when we see our patients’ social needs over telehealth, we press a button and send a supportive colleague to help right away.
People do recover, and seeing people get better is an unbelievably rewarding, rejuvenating experience. As clinicians treating SUD, we see parents get their kids back. We see young people discover who they are and go on to live full, meaningful lives. We see people exiting incarceration into safe and stable environments. With clinicians, care staff, and peers at the ready, our patients in rural communities feel less alone. It feels good to celebrate wins –– big and small –– with our patients.
The weight of the world is no longer on one person’s shoulders. We’re proudly working together to treat people the way they deserve to be treated.
–– Dr. Liz Ryan
