At the conclusion of every year, we sit down as a company and ask a simple question: did we actually help people this year? The CMS 2025 Patient Outcomes Report is our attempt to answer that honestly with data, not just good intentions. Here’s what it told us, and what I believe it means.
The Scale of the Need
In 2025, Community Medical Services welcomed 22,657 new patients (defined as a person who has never previously completed an intake at a CMS clinic) across 71 clinics nationwide, a census that grew 8.7% year-over-year. Our counselors logged 171,961 hours of direct counseling with 37,935 total unique patients.
Numbers like that can start to feel abstract. But behind each one is someone who woke up one day and decided to walk through our doors. At enrollment, our patients are telling us something specific about what recovery actually requires: 66.1% report unemployment, 20.3% report being without housing, and the median age is just under 40, squarely in the years people are supposed to be building careers and raising families.
Recovery Isn’t a Straight Line, and Our Data Proves It
One number stood out to me as the clearest evidence of our philosophy in action: 11,079 patients returned to care at a CMS clinic in 2025 after being away for 30 days or more.
I know how that number could be read the wrong way. But we don’t see readmission as a failure metric — we see it as proof that our door stayed open. Return-to-use is a normal, expected part of recovery. matters is whether someone knows they have somewhere to go back when they’re ready. Our goal is always continuous engagement in care. But when someone leaves, a setback should never become a permanent barrier to returning.
The toxicology data backs this up in a more granular way: fentanyl positivity declines fastest and earliest after someone enters treatment, while stimulant use trends down more gradually as behavioral stabilization takes hold. Recovery happens on different timelines for different substances, and for different people.
“Judgment-free” isn’t a tagline for us—it’s the standard our patients feel every day, like the Aurora, CO patient who said staff treated her with respect, support and kindness 100% of the time.
Meeting the Moment: Polysubstance Use and a Changing Drug Supply
The data on what’s actually in our patients’ systems when they arrive is sobering. Most new or returning patients test positive for multiple substances, many without knowing everything they’ve been exposed to. Fentanyl continues to dominate the illicit supply, and xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer, is showing up more frequently in fentanyl-contaminated products. Unlike opioids, xylazine doesn’t respond to naloxone, which is complicating overdose response nationally.
Investing in Evidence: Our In-House Lab
Something I’m particularly proud of this year: our CLIA-accredited lab processed over 4 million tests in 2025 and launched an STI screening pilot at all Arizona clinics, with preliminary data demonstrating that the incidence rates for our patient population are significantly higher than national averages. Our goal is to expand this in the future due to the significant impact on public health. With more than 70% of all healthcare decisions driven by diagnostics, our in-house lab makes us more responsive, more efficient and more accountable. And most importantly, for our patients, this may be their only recent contact with the healthcare system.
The Clinical Case for Treating People in Custody
Our correctional health program remains one of the areas where I believe we’re doing some of our most important — and most overlooked — work. National studies prove that nearly two-thirds of incarcerated people in the U.S. have a substance use disorder, and the leading cause of death for people leaving incarceration is overdose. The risk is 40 times higher in just the first two weeks after release.
The reason we’ve built programs inside jails and prisons since 2010 is simple: providing medication for opioid use disorder while someone is incarcerated cuts the risk of a fatal overdose post-release by at least half, and cuts recidivism by nearly a third. Compare that to a simple referral at release, which only about 8% of people actually follow through on.
Where We Go from Here
As we continue into 2026 and beyond, our goals have to reflect this continued commitment to our patients, our communities, and our team. We continue to open more clinics in underserved communities, expand our lab capabilities to allow for appropriate medical decisions to be made, and develop deeper partnerships with cities as the opioid crisis evolves—from xylazine to concentrated 7-OH and whatever comes next.
But growth only matters if it answers the same question we started with. So next year, when we sit down and ask if we actually helped people, we want the answer to still be yes—for every person who walks through our doors.
