Meet the Co-Founders of Opioid Free America
Physician and veteran-lead, Opioid Free America is a mission-driven nonprofit dedicated to ending the opioid crisis through advocacy, education, prescribing analytics, and certification programs that advance higher-quality, opioid-free care.
We believe prevention starts at the source – stopping addiction before it begins, rather than just treating its aftermath. Opioid Free America is shaping a healthier future by advancing responsible prescribing, reducing unnecessary opioid exposure, and supporting better treatment options.
Real solutions require bold ideas, collaborative leadership, and measurable results. By prioritizing prevention, we are saving lives and building a stronger, healthier tomorrow.
Matt McCord, MD
Dr. Matt McCord is a pioneering physician, veteran, and national leader in opioid-free surgical care and prevention. A former U.S. Air Force Medical Corps Major, he co-founded Opioid Free America to combat opioid dependence through innovative clinical, policy, and educational strategies.
Drawing on decades of experience as an anesthesiologist, medical director, and healthcare entrepreneur, Dr. McCord has led multimodal pain programs, advised labor unions and employers on opioid risk mitigation, and played a key role in shaping opioid-sparing legislation. His work spans from the operating room to Capitol Hill, where he champions opioid-free recovery as both a clinical imperative and a public health mission.
I’m Matt McCord, MD — an anesthesiologist and acute pain physician who has spent 32 years on the front lines of American healthcare. Over those decades, I have watched something deeply troubling unfold:
We spend more on healthcare than any nation in history… yet Americans are dying younger than people in every other peer country.
America leads the world in healthcare innovation, yet those breakthroughs have never translated into better or more efficient care — and now the gap is widening in the wrong direction. — pulled downward by four forces we created ourselves:
- routine opioid prescribing that turns acute care into lifelong dependence
- smoking and preventable disease
- metabolic illness we refuse to prevent
- a healthcare industry bloated with middlemen who profit when care fails
And no chart captures this tragedy more clearly than the one showing America’s uniquely catastrophic rise in opioid overdose deaths. No other country on Earth has seen anything like it. Only America was marketed to — aggressively — and told that chronic opioid use was safe, compassionate, even modern. It wasn’t. It was catastrophic.
For the latter phase of my career, I want to give back and touch far more lives than I ever could in the operating room. I want to help wean America off its dependence on opioids and rebuild the health of our communities.
So, we found Opioid Free America for one reason:
The tool we need to fix this already exists — data.
For too long that data has been hoarded, distorted, or weaponized against patients, employers, and prescribers. We are reclaiming it. We turn that data into the most powerful force for good American healthcare has ever seen:
- Exposing waste
- Predicting risk early
- Identifying harmful prescribing patterns before addiction starts
- Empowering clinicians with insights they were never given
This is not simply about ending unnecessary opioid exposure — though that alone will save countless lives. It’s about something bigger: Leaving the workforce, our communities, and this country in better shape than we found it.
Our mission is to partner with prescribers — the people at the front line of pain care — and give them the education, standards, and data-driven tools needed to prevent addiction before it begins.
We advance safer care, opioid-free recovery, and evidence-based alternatives that protect patients rather than expose them.
Better health. Lower costs. Longer lives.
It all begins with data — and ends with America leading the world again in health, not falling behind. That’s my Why. This is the work I was meant to do.
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Doug Geinzer
Douglas Geinzer is the founder and president of the High Performance portfolio of companies, known for building strong partnerships with industry leaders and advancing healthcare reform by aligning world-class providers with self-funded health plans to deliver better health outcomes for lower transparent prices.
With over 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Doug is recognized for delivering measurable results and freely sharing tools such as Geek Speak and The Power of Navigation to help support the growth and success of the direct care movement. He also serves as chief strategist for Opioid Free America, advocating for political reform, education and certification programs, and leveraging technology-driven solutions to address the opioid crisis.
Motivated by the personal loss of fraternity brothers and military comrades to overdoses, Doug is committed to transforming healthcare through bold leadership, proven innovation, and an unwavering focus on outcomes that put people first.
My “why” goes beyond the opioid crisis. I cofounded Opioid Free America because opioid overprescribing is the single largest health crisis facing our nation, and it was incubated by the very medical systems meant to protect us. Over 100,000 people die from overdoses every year – that’s 30 times the number of lives lost on September 11th. And it happens year after year. Imagine thirty 9-11’s happening every year or a 737 crashing every single day – that is the scale of the opioid crisis. It takes our sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, friends, neighbors and colleagues.
I have lost too many friends and family members, fraternity brothers, and military brothers to a senseless crisis that could – and should – have been avoided. Yet, instead of addressing overprescribing at its source, we continue to rely on the myth that treatment alone can solve this epidemic. It cannot.
The opioid crisis also exposes one of healthcare’s greatest misalignments of incentives. Pharmaceutical companies profit from mass distribution. Hospitals profit from increased ER utilization and hospitalizations. Addiction clinics – often owned by the very hospital systems that refer patients – benefit from multiple admissions and relapses. All while, insurance carriers profit from higher utilization and increased MLR (medical loss ratio) spending. We cannot ‘treat’ our way out of this epidemic while those with financial incentives maintain the status quo continue to profit. We must address the opioid crisis at the root of the problem and eradicate the unnecessary over prescribing.
When thought leaders say tackle ‘the one problem’ that could solve a cascade of downstream problems – Tackling the opioid crisis is the only way to save lives and create lasting change.
Coming Soon
Amy Mecham
Amy Mecham brings more than 20 years of executive leadership experience spanning healthcare operations, marketing, international investment strategy, and organizational development. Her career in clinical administration – particularly within ambulatory surgery centers and pain and addiction treatment – gave her firsthand exposure to the profound human and system-level consequences of the opioid crisis. Motivated by these experiences, she co-founded Opioid Free America to advance meaningful, prevention-focused solutions. She brings insight into how the crisis took hold and what it will take to create lasting change through true prevention.
Amy pairs this understanding with a distinctive blend of creativity and business acumen, shaped by years in high-end product positioning, marketing strategy, and business operations. Known for turning complex challenges into streamlined, high-performing solutions, Amy brings a sharp sense of accountability and a results-driven approach – helping organizations elevate not only how they present themselves, but how they perform.
During my years in ASC and clinical administration for a pain and addiction center – what often felt like ground zero of the opioid crisis – I witnessed firsthand the devastating effects of our nation’s opioid crisis. I watched pharmaceutical representatives charm providers over free lunch with “no risk of addiction” claims, while patients suffered the consequences. After a nearby clinic experienced a tragic shooting over prescription drugs, we shut down our in-house pharmacy and trained for active shooter scenarios — a reality that should never exist in healthcare.
When other clinics stopped prescribing opioids, desperate patients came to us demanding extreme doses normally reserved for true end-of-life care. We became investigators, testing urine to see who was using, selling, or mixing street drugs just to survive. I saw friends, family, and patients alike struggle with addiction and loss — experiences that reinforced how deeply this crisis touches every corner of life.
It became clear that the system wasn’t healing people — it was breaking them. Other countries approach surgical care far more responsibly. In Europe, opioids are prescribed post-operatively only about 5% of the time, compared to 95% in the U.S. I understand the clinical processes and prescriber oversight needed to implement meaningful change on a systemic level so we can transform healthcare.
It’s not enough to treat this epidemic. We must lead a movement that prioritizes true prevention and healing for an opioid free America
Coming Soon
Join Us in Building an Opioid-Free Future
We believe true prevention starts with bold ideas and committed people. If you’re ready to rethink the system—stop managing the problem and start solving it—we’d love to hear from you.
And the subtitle is better