Since 2024 you have been able to buy a continuous glucose monitor in this country without a prescription, and that single change is what makes this a Boulder question rather than a diabetes question. Dexcom’s Stelo describes itself on its own site as an over-the-counter sensor “intended to continuously measure, record, analyze, and display glucose values in people 18 years and older not on insulin,” sold on a monthly subscription listed at $89 on October 1, 2026. Abbott’s Lingo carries almost the same language and adds that it is “NOT intended for diagnosis of diseases, including diabetes.” So the hardware is a consumer purchase now. What is not a consumer purchase is somebody who will sit down with fourteen days of your data, walk you through what the numbers show, and connect any of it to what you actually eat before a long ride up Lefthand Canyon.
That second thing is the service this article went looking for in Boulder County, and the supply turned out to be both small and strangely distributed. Searching the published websites of the county’s nutrition practices, functional medicine clinics, endocrinology offices and weight-loss providers on October 1, 2026 produced six operators that put a glucose sensor in writing — one Boulder family practice, one Boulder nurse-practitioner clinic, one Louisville concierge physician, one Longmont hospital clinic, one multi-office endocrinology group, and one Arvada telehealth practice reaching into the county from outside it.
Helios Integrated Medicine — the Boulder practice that names the sensor in its blood-sugar workup
Helios is an integrative family practice at 350 Broadway Street, Suite 100, in south Boulder, open Tuesday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. with a daily closure from 1 to 2 and Mondays closed. Its page on blood sugar regulation and insulin resistance is clear: the practice says it evaluates blood sugar by looking at fasting glucose, fasting insulin, HbA1c and “the often recommended continuous blood sugar monitor,” and it is specific about why, writing that it is “particularly attuned to reactive hypoglycemia, a pattern that is commonly missed because patients are told their fasting glucose is normal.” Treatment is described as dietary change, movement, stress management and targeted supplementation, with berberine, magnesium and chromium named. The clinicians listed are Pierre Brunschwig, MD, Deborah Breakell, FNP, and Margaret Hampton, DACM. One thing to budget for: the practice states plainly that it contracts with no insurance company, is not a participating Medicare or Medicaid provider, and provides a superbill you can submit yourself.
A Spring 2023 newsletter, written by Hampton, says that “Dr. Brunschwig and Deborah Breakell NP have been implementing a technology called ‘Continuous Glucose Monitors’ or CGM’s with many Helios patients,” and describes patients wearing them while receiving acupuncture. Treat the sensor as part of a workup rather than something you can book by name. Phone is 303-499-9224.
Boulder Integrative Health — a detailed CGM explainer
Carrie Ballas, BSN, MS, FNP-C, ABAAHP, runs this clinic at 2575 Pearl Street, Unit 1B, with published hours of Monday 10 to 6, Tuesday 10 to 2, Wednesday 8 to 4 and Thursday 7 to 3, and a phone number of 303-459-4875. Her article on glucose tracking is detailed, and it includes the numbers she works to: fasting glucose of 70 to 86, post-meal glucose of 110 to 120 and no higher than 140, a return to roughly 100 two to three hours after eating, HbA1c optimal below 5.4 and fasting insulin below 7. Those are her practice’s targets, and they are tighter than the diagnostic thresholds the same article quotes for prediabetes and diabetes — worth knowing before you read your own graph as a problem. Ask what she charges to place and read a sensor today, and which current devices she works with.
Colorado Concierge Functional Medicine — a published price that separates the device from the reading
At 275 Century Circle, Suite 202, in Louisville, Dr. Dan LaPerriere’s practice prices the sensor and the conversation separately. Its program pricing pages list a “DexCom G6 Pro 10-day Continuous Glucose Monitor — Monitor with coaching visit for placement and coaching visit to review results — $200” and, on the next line, “DexCom G6 Pro Unit alone without coaching assistance — $100.” Read those two lines together and the practice has published what the reading is worth to it, which is $100 for two visits. LaPerriere is described as a board-certified family medicine physician, an Institute for Functional Medicine certified practitioner and ReCODE 2.0 certified; the clinic is open Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., on 720-634-3870.
The caveat is where that price lives. Both pages carrying it are pricing sheets for the PreCODE and ReCODE cognitive-wellness programs built on the Bredesen protocol, so the sensor is an add-on inside a cognitive-wellness program, not a walk-in service. The practice’s separate concierge membership is published at $2,100 a year, or $175 a month, with physician time billed at $450 an hour and health coach time at $125 an hour falling to $90 an hour if you prepay six hours. It contracts with no private insurer and does not run routine labs through insurance, offering discounted LabCorp rates instead. Those coach rates are the other reason to read this page even if cognitive care is not why you came.
UCHealth Diabetes and Endocrinology Clinic, Longmont — the one route insurance is built for
This clinic’s published service list names the thing as an educational service: “Insulin pump and CGM education, training and support,” delivered by what the clinic describes as a nationally recognized program meeting American Diabetes Association standards, staffed by Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialists who are registered nurses and registered dietitians. The published teaching list is the unglamorous and practical kind — carbohydrate counting, correcting the highs and lows, dining out, grocery shopping, and monitoring tips and timing. The clinic sits at 1551 Professional Lane, Suite 125, Longmont, open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, on 720-494-3119, with endocrinologists Mark Bridenstine, Gillian CJ Ditton, Leila Wing and Iratxe Eskurza Garcia and nurse practitioner Barbara DePriest listed.
Two gates stand in front of it. The clinic states that it welcomes new patients with a referral from a primary care physician, and that individual consultations and classes are available with a referral from your primary physician — so you cannot self-book. And it notes that diabetes classes and individual consultations are a Medicare benefit, which is the plain signal that this lane is built around a diagnosis. If you are a healthy Boulder cyclist curious about your post-ride numbers, this is not the door; if you have diabetes and want someone to teach you the device your endocrinologist prescribed, it is a door that insurance was designed to open.
Boulder Medical Center — four county endocrinology offices
Boulder Medical Center is the independently owned multi-specialty group that has served the county since 1949, and its endocrinology and diabetes department runs out of four addresses: Boulder-Foothills at 4745 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 200; Longmont at 1551 Professional Lane, Suite 240; Louisville at 80 Health Park Drive, Suite 100; and Erie at 89 S. Briggs Street, Suite 105. All four list weekday hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on 303-541-0807, with a department line of 303-666-2640. The conditions the department publishes include diabetes, both Type I and Type II, insulin resistance, and weight management, which makes it the obvious in-Boulder specialist option for exactly the problem a sensor is used on.
Call to ask whether the department works with continuous glucose monitors. There is also a small geographic detail readers of this article will appreciate: its Longmont office is in the same building as the UCHealth clinic above, two suites apart.
Weight Loss NP — an Arvada telehealth practice that puts the sensor in the program description
This one is not a Boulder County business and is included with that stated rather than implied. Weight Loss NP lists a primary office at 12650 W 64th Avenue, Unit 207, in Arvada, in-person by appointment only, plus a Denver office at 387 Corona Street, Suite 1116, and says that while it has physical offices in those two cities, most of its patients are seen through telehealth across Colorado, Utah and Florida. The reason it earns a section is its description of the actual service: its options page lists “Weight Loss Coaching with Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM)” as a named offering alongside metformin, phentermine, bupropion, low-dose naltrexone and peptides, and the practice writes that its nurse practitioners use CGM data to help build “a custom ‘blueprint’ of foods” with the patient. Reach it on 720-340-8154. Ask for the price of the CGM coaching before you commit.
Dietitians and the Sensor Question
Blood sugar comes up often on the county’s dietitian sites: Essential Nutrition, for one, lists blood sugar balance on its homepage, sells a class on balancing it, and has three providers who name blood sugar management as a specialty. If you want help reading sensor data, ask a dietitian directly whether they offer it.
For endurance athletes, there is a published reason a careful dietitian might hold back on sensor programs. A 2023 review in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism notes that athlete-specific devices are marketed by their manufacturers as a “fueling gauge,” enabling athletes to “push their limits longer and get bigger gains,” then states that the application is “largely untested” and that extensive research is required before interstitial glucose can be read as a measure of fueling adequacy. A practitioner who declines to sell you a sensor program may be following that literature rather than missing an opportunity.
What Colorado Medicaid Requires Before It Pays for a Sensor
If cost is the deciding factor, the state’s own rules are worth reading, because they contain a quiet requirement for training. Colorado’s Preferred Diabetic Supply List, effective November 1, 2025, sets five criteria that must all be met before Health First Colorado covers a monitor at the pharmacy counter. The second of them is that “the beneficiary (or caregiver) has sufficient training on the CGM system’s use, documented in the medical record.” The state will not pay for a sensor unless somebody has taught you to use it, which is the service this whole article is about. The other criteria are narrower than most people expect: a diagnosis of Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, prescription in line with the device’s FDA indications, and either insulin treatment or a documented history of problematic hypoglycemia, defined as more than one level 2 event below 54 mg/dL despite therapy adjustments or one level 3 event requiring third-party assistance. A visit within the prior six months must confirm all of it, and the practitioner has to re-document adherence every six months after that. Senate Bill 24-168 added coverage for people with gestational diabetes who are not being treated with insulin, for the duration of the pregnancy. Dexcom G6 and G7 sensors are listed as preferred with prior authorization required; FreeStyle Libre sensors are non-preferred, also with prior authorization.
Before You Book
Decide first which of two different purchases you are making, because Boulder County sells them in opposite directions. If you have diabetes and want the device explained, the Longmont UCHealth clinic publishes CGM education as a service and is structured around insurance — and it needs a referral from your primary care provider, so that call comes first. If you do not have diabetes and are curious, no insurance pathway exists for you in this state, every option above is cash, and the honest comparison is between a clinic visit and the sensor companies, which now sell coaching themselves: Stelo’s own site advertises 1:1 nutrition coaching alongside the $89 monthly subscription.
Then ask four questions. What does one placement-and-review cycle cost, separately from the sensor — one Louisville practice publishes $200 with coaching and $100 for the device alone. Who reads the data, a physician at $450 an hour or a health coach at $125, because those are both published rates at the same Louisville practice and they are not the same product. What target range will they hold you to, and is it a diagnostic threshold or a clinic’s optimal range, which is the distinction buried in the Pearl Street numbers above. And if you are an athlete, what exactly will change in your training on the strength of the graph, given a 2023 review calling that use largely untested. Also confirm before you drive: three of the practices here publish limited weekday hours, one of them closes every afternoon between 1 and 2, and every price and address in this article was read on October 1, 2026.
This article describes what local businesses offer and, where noted, what they say about their own services. Boulder Vibe does not endorse any treatment for any condition, and nothing here is medical advice. Please talk with your doctor or another qualified clinician before starting something new.
