Boulder Care, a Portland, Ore.-based startup that provides telehealth treatment for people with opioid and alcohol use disorder, raised $35 million in new funding.
Led by founder and CEO Stephanie Strong, Boulder Care was founded in 2017 with the goal of bringing treatment to people through an app-based program. The startup employs physicians, nurse practitioners, peer recovery specialists, social services support and more as part of a multidisciplinary care team.
“It’s really rewarding to raise from investors who share our vision, particularly with Medicaid,” Strong told GeekWire. “I think we’ve only doubled down in our focus on serving that customer segment and ensuring that we’re building tools and services for some of the most underserved patients.”
The Series C round was led by Advance Venture Partners along with Stripes, First Round Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, and Laerdal Million Lives Fund.
Strong said that 80% of Boulder Care’s patients are covered by Medicaid. Most are low income, living in rural areas, and experiencing other challenges in poverty or in co-occurring medical conditions. She said such a client base hasn’t always been attractive to venture investors or with digital health startups in general.
“It’s been really great to be part of that change as folks are realizing when you engage people who are not getting health care and help them recover from their opioid use disorder and start treating some of the other things that are causing some of these adverse outcomes, there’s also a really great economic opportunity as well,” Strong said.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse reported that in 2021 an estimated 2.5 million people aged 18 years or older in the U.S. had an opioid use disorder in the past year, yet only 1 in 5 of them received medications to treat it.
During the pandemic, the federal government waived the requirement for an in-person visit for providers to prescribe Suboxone (Buprenorphine), a medication used to treat adults addicted to opioids, which Boulder Care offers.
Strong said Boulder Care continues to focus on both technology and healthcare —and figuring out how to integrate both.
“We’re always finding new ways that technology makes the work that we do possible,” she said. “Part of the magic of the Boulder model is that every patient feels like they’re the most important patient to their clinician and their care team. And now our primary challenge is using technology to help scale that without losing that relationship.”
Boulder Care serves patients in multiple states, with a concentration in Washington, Oregon and Ohio. Strong said the new funds will be used to expand reach to a couple new states in the next 12 months.
Strong, who won the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award at the 2021 GeekWire Awards, was a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree in health care in 2019 and has a background in venture capital investing and consulting around health care and technology.
Boulder previously raised a $36 million Series B round in June 2022, and Strong said revenue has grown more than 10x since then.
The startup, which employs about 170 people, has raised about $85 million to date.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with new details.
