Virtual MAT Provider Bicycle Health Lands $50M in the Face of Uncertain Regulatory Environment

Boston-based Bicycle Health has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round.

The virtual medication-assisted treatment (MAT) provider for opioid use disorder (OUD) appears to continue to have significant traction with investors. About a year ago, Bicycle Health raised a $27 million Series A funding round.

In total, the company has raised $83 million, according to a news release. The startup plans to do the following with this latest funding round:

• Grow the clinical and technology innovator teams
• Further develop its virtual care platform
• Establish strategic partnerships to reach more patients
• Double down on research for MAT and virtual model care 

Bicycle Health, founded on a hybrid model, now offers all-virtual MAT treatment in 25 states; It expanded into Delaware in May.

The company claims to have cared for 15,000 patients, and by doing so, has saved the collective American health care system over $1.1 billion. Bicycle Health estimates that it will save the health care system nearly $25.9 billion by 2026 as it reaches more people.

A report from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration estimates that 9.5 million, about 3.4%, of the American population ages 12 and older had abused opioids in 2020: 9.3 million people misused prescription pain relievers compared with 902,000 people who used heroin.

The same report finds that about 798,000 of the estimated 2.5 million people diagnosed with OUD in the previous year (11.2%) received MAT.

“For too long, Americans struggling with opioid addiction have felt lost when looking for treatment options – whether due to lack of access to in-person facilities or the monetary and social costs traditionally associated with treatment,” Ankit Gupta, founder and CEO of Bicycle Health, said in the release. “Bicycle Health has proven there’s a different way to help people face their OUD, and with this latest round of funding, we will continue making our virtual care platform available to even more Americans battling OUD.”

Omaha-based InterAlpen Partners led the round. Other participants include existing investors Questa Capital, Frist Cressey Ventures, and City Light Capital, the release states. Questa Capital led the Series A round which also saw City Light Capital participate.

In a previous interview, Gupta told Behavioral Health Business that the company’s roots are in hybrid care. Bicycle Health started out as an addiction treatment clinic that facilitated telehealth in Redwood City, California.

But the onset of the pandemic pushed Bicycle Health from a hybrid to all telehealth.

“We were able to provide almost a significantly higher quality of care through telemedicine,” Gupta said at the time, adding telehealth overcomes the potential barriers of transportation, convenience and stigma, making the care more accessible. “Our treatment actually fits into your life. it becomes more accessible and also becomes less expensive.”

Bicycle Health also has clinical offices in all of the states where it operates.

This is a vital feature for Bicycle Health and all other MAT providers that have some kind of virtual presence as the federal government reassesses how it will regulate the prescribing of virtual substances via telehealth.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in March 2020 waived a key provision to the Ryan Haight Act, which requires an in-person visit before a patient is prescribed a controlled substance and then another in-person visit once every 24 months.

This made it easier for MAT providers to see patients and get them connected to needed medications — of which buprenorphine is considered the gold-standard treatment in opioid use disorder — and for those providers to expand across the country.

However, the industry is still waiting to see how a fluid federal regulatory environment shakes out. Congress is working on laws that impact the mental health sector: For example, the powerful Senate Finance Committee released draft legislation that impacts telehealth for mental health services.

Further, the DEA is about three years late in promulgating rules that would allow MAT providers to prescribe controlled substances via telehealth. Should the DEA end its exemption to the Ryan Haight Act before it releases these new rules or before any new legislation comes into force, MAT providers who see patients virtually would be required to facilitate in-person visits.