Treatment starts. Most patients stop.
28.4% discontinue in the first month1 — before stabilization, before the medication has time to work. By six months, 64.6% are gone.1 The median time in treatment for a first episode is just 77 days.1 This is not a medication problem. It is a continuity failure: the system that prescribes does not manage the episode.
Virtual care fixed access. Not retention.
There are 16 virtual SUD solutions on the market. The Peterson Health Technology Institute assessed them and was clear-eyed: virtual care matches usual care at lower cost to deliver. What it did not move was retention — 13 additional days over six months, no improvement in treatment initiation.2 That is the honest read, and it is the whole opening.
The reason is structural. The existing virtual MAT providers optimize for prescription access. The prescription is a single touchpoint in a treatment arc that spans months, and the rest of the arc goes unmanaged. Continuum is built for the open problem — with the management fee at risk against 90-day retention.
Identify. Treat. Retain.
Continuum is designed to manage the episode, not just the prescription. Every member gets a named clinical navigator from intake through 14-month maintenance. Four mechanisms carry it.
Named navigator continuity
The same navigator coordinates induction through 14-month follow-up. One person, one record, one continuous relationship. Not a call center. Not a rotation.
Structured virtual IOP
9 hours per week of evidence-based programming — CBT, motivational interviewing, relapse prevention, psychoeducation. The clinical program that lives between prescriptions.
Buprenorphine via permanent telehealth
The DEA/HHS final rule made telemedicine buprenorphine permanent, effective 12/31/2025.3 Audio-video or audio-only. No in-person at initiation; in-person within six months, coordinated by your navigator.
Measured outcomes, reported to you
AUDIT-C, DAST-10, PHQ-9, and GAD-7 at intake, discharge, and 90 days. Retention metrics. Completion rates. Quarterly aggregate reporting to your benefits team.
One continuous thread. Five phases.
What you do. What you get.
Almost nothing. Identify Continuum as a benefit option in your SUD communications. Provide a warm referral pathway from your EAP or care management team. That is the full implementation — no tech integration, no carrier changes, no minimum volume.
Quarterly aggregate retention and outcome reports. Navigator accountability metrics. Completion rates by episode phase. Performance-guarantee tracking. A clinical program you can point to at renewal — proof you are governing the SUD population, not just covering the prescription.
Two views make this concrete. The navigator workspace is where one named navigator runs a caseload — episode timelines, scheduled tasks, alerts that escalate when a session is missed, and clinical notes tracking COWS, UDS, and PHQ-9 over time. The quarterly employer report is what lands on the buyer's desk at renewal — referred, inducted, and retained counts, retention against target, aggregate outcome scores, and an equity check across subgroups.
Paid against retention, not prescriptions.
The fee is at risk against a single, auditable trigger: 90-day retention. The target is 65%, against a 48.4% national baseline.1 The gap between those two numbers is the value Continuum is built to capture.
If retention falls below threshold, we credit the fee.
Enhanced fee-for-service with a capped performance guarantee. One trigger, one metric: retention. Bounded, auditable, not open-ended — and we publish the result either way.
90 days. Measured. Fee at risk.
Kentucky launch, expanding to Ohio. Designed to prove the model on a defined population before scaling.