IV hydration clinics are booming in Colorado, but regulations haven’t kept pace
LITTLETON, Colo. — Colorado is home to more than 100 IV hydration clinics. A decade ago, you could count the number of clinics on your hands.
The rapid growth of these spaces — swapping fluorescent exam rooms for soft-lighting and spa-like settings, where you can choose your cocktail of infusions — reflects a broader trend of blending medical treatments with the wellness industry. IV therapy delivers fluids directly into a vein. The treatment is typically used to hydrate patients who are sick and unable to drink and process enough fluids on their own.
“I think the market is going to explode. And really, I think that's because of the rising generation,” said Matthew Lane, a registered nurse and owner of IVitalize Mobile, a mobile IV hydration company he started in 2024 with his wife, who is also a registered nurse.
“They want everything delivered,” Lane said of his customers around the Denver metro area. He runs his clinic entirely as a mobile service.
Globally, the IV hydration therapy market, valued at $2.8 billion in 2024, is projected to reach $4.9 billion by 2033. Yet the industry’s regulation has not kept pace despite concerns about oversight and safety.
On average, Lane sees about seven clients per week. His mobile clinic is one of roughly a dozen mobile IV hydration clinics in the Denver metro area. His clients range from their 20s to their 60s and typically find him through his website. Common complaints from Lane’s clients include migraines, nausea, stomach bugs and viral symptoms, he said. Occasionally, it’s for “general wellness.”
Lane’s most popular offering among eight menu options is the $195 Myer’s Cocktail, designed to “vitalize” the body. The cocktail contains one liter of fluid infused with magnesium, B-complex vitamins, B12, vitamin C, glutathione and zinc.
The infusion doesn’t treat any specific illness; it is marketed as a wellness treatment. Lane said his clients are usually looking for boosted energy, immunity and overall vitality.
“I think it's really a gimmick, frankly,” Dr. Jeffrey Brent said of the IV industry. Brent, who practices at the UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, has 35 years of experience in medical toxicology. There is no evidence that the supplements administered by almost all of the medical spas are medically helpful to people, Brent said. His research focuses on proven treatments for toxic exposures, and his clinical work is primarily with poisoned or critically ill patients.
Brent isn’t alone in his skepticism. Dr. Brent A. Bauer, the director of research at the Mayo Clinic’s Integrative Medicine and Health section, said there is limited evidence supporting IV therapy for "wellness" reasons.
IV treatments are common for people who are unable to eat or have serious medical conditions. “In these situations, IV vitamin therapy is effective because it is meeting a nutritional need of the body,” Bauer said in 2024.
Regulation of this growing industry has gaps. According to a recent study published by JAMA Internal Medicine, only four states — Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina and Vermont — issued policies or statements that explicitly addressed how the IV therapy is prepared and dispensed, who can prescribe and administer IV therapy, and how it is governed. Other states addressed one or some of these categories.
Colorado has issued guidelines on none of these. According to Katie O’Donnell, a spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, IV hydration clinics are not regulated by the state. The Division of Professions and Occupations licenses individual health care practitioners, not facilities. The Colorado Medical Board and the State Board of Nursing do not have statutory authority over facilities and do not have authority to take disciplinary action against facilities.
As a result, Colorado’s rules for elective IV therapy are comparatively lax. Registered nurses may own IV hydration clinics under physician supervision, as Lane does, but the physician does not need to be physically present. The supervising physician serves as medical director and signs off on a clinic’s standardized operating procedures — including the specific IV “drips” offered — and ensures regulatory compliance.
One of Lane’s clients, Kerianne Cussio, suffers from gastroparesis, a chronic condition in which the stomach’s muscles and nerves don’t activate correctly. As a result, the stomach slows down the digestive system leading to symptoms including nausea, vomiting, constipation, abdominal pain and other complications. Cussio, 39, was diagnosed with gastroparesis at age 27 and has been a weekly client of Lane’s for two years.
Cussio experienced her first flare the week she got married and landed in the hospital the day after her wedding. She spent what was supposed to be her honeymoon in the hospital. “It worsens as you get older,” Cussio said. “It’s a progressive disease. So eventually at some point in my life, I may have to go on a feeding tube. It’s super painful. Stress, anxiety, food, diet — all of it can trigger it for you.”
The weekly at-home IV therapy keeps her out of the hospital, she said, allowing her to be with her nine-year-old twin daughters and husband. It’s been about 10 months since she was last hospitalized, she said.
In the last week of January, Cussio opted for the Myer’s Cocktail Max from IVitalize’s menu, with a few add-ons, which would have cost her $450. She got a discount from Lane and paid $325, she said.
“With gastroparesis, I get dehydrated real easily,” Cussio said as she received her treatment.
“And I get really bad nausea, so sometimes, I’ll have him give me Zofran in the package as well. I also like adding the benadryl with the taurine. The combination of that helps my muscles relax. And I get vitamin C when my daughters get sick or when I travel just to keep me safe,” said Cussio, whose doctor also prescribes monthly oral medications for nausea and acid buildup in her stomach.
“I don’t know if it works for everybody, but it works for me,” she said.
Cussio’s been advised by her doctors to consider several surgical procedures if her symptoms become unbearable and underwent gastric peroral endoscopic myotomy to relieve symptoms. She said she’d consider gastric bypass if her symptoms worsen. Gastric bypass is considered a last-resort surgical treatment because it alters the digestive tract.
“I'm just trying to push that as far back as I possibly can,” she said. “Since I was diagnosed, my disease has definitely gotten worse year to year.”
The first ten days of February, Cussio said she spent every day getting IV administered to her in her home by Lane because she was in a very bad flare.
“The money, it adds up,” Cussio said. She currently pays out of pocket for each treatment because insurance does not cover IV hydration spa services.
“But it does help me significantly. I get some instant relief to the point where I'm not in tears or just curled into a ball. The oral meds don’t work as fast as the IV meds,” she said.
Cussio’s situation is unique. Most regular IV users are seeking “self-optimization” rather than a post-illness alleviation, according to an IV industry-published study from 2025.
Colorado also allows a broader range of providers to administer IV therapy. Licensed practical nurses (LPNs) may administer IVs under the direct supervision of a registered nurse or physician without needing additional “IV Authority” certification. A recent law mandates providers to disclose when certain medical-aesthetic services are delegated to non-licensed individuals.
Medical assistants and EMS providers may also administer IV therapy in Colorado if properly certified and supervised by a medical director.
In a handful of states, however, medical assistants and other unlicensed personnel are prohibited from performing IV therapy. In Texas, that restriction was codified in 2025 with the passage of "Jenifer’s Law," enacted after the death of Jenifer Cleveland in 2023 after she received an IV treatment at a medical spa.
“The agencies don't determine what is regulated, the legislators do,” O’Donnell said of Colorado’s regulations. “If they decided to run a bill and it passed, the agencies would implement [it].”
In his practice, Lane said he only hires registered nurses to administer hydration packets and has patients’ medical histories reviewed virtually by a third-party company before any treatment. But Dr. Brent argues that virtual assessments and just taking a set of vital signs, which is what Lane does before injecting clients, is not a medical evaluation.
“If somebody were to come in with something like an intracranial bleed that's presenting as a headache, they might have a lot of signs within their parameters,” Brent said. ”So that is not the way you would diagnose things like that or other kinds of strokes.”
While it is fine to go into these spaces and get some vitamins — they probably won’t hurt you — the best way to get vitamins is by making sure you have a well-rounded diet, he said.
“Any time you intravenously administer something to people, you run the risk of complications,” he added.
“It's unlikely that vitamins are going to hurt most people, but there is always the possibility that somebody's going to have an adverse reaction to them.”
Adverse reactions include rashes or a slight drop in blood pressure, or more major responses such as anaphylaxis, which is potentially fatal, Brent said.
“And it's very idiosyncratic,” he said. “It's just like an allergy. Some people are just gonna have those kinds of reactions. So I don't think these IV hydration spas do any good.”
Since launching his business, Lane has administered more than 400 IV infusions and said he’s had only had one incident where a client experienced a mild reaction. “So he felt like his heart started racing. He felt flushed for less than five minutes,” Lane said. “And I think I pushed it too fast. That's the only reaction I've ever had.”
Lane admits that patients taking IV therapy for fun or wellness may not feel a significant difference. But those who are symptomatic, he said, feel significantly better.
But Brent said if someone has a migraine, they can just get something like Ondansetron, a prescription drug, from their primary care physician. When seeking medical care for something like a bad headache, he said, nobody is going to say “just sit down, we'll get somebody to put an IV in.”
“I have no objection, personally, to people getting things if they are medically prescribed, but for people just to walk in and sort of declare what treatment they want and get them is potentially dangerous or, in many cases, useless,” Brent said. “They really shouldn't do that without any medical evaluation because there could be serious underlying issues.”
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. To read more about why you can trust the journalism of Rocky Mountain PBS, please visit our editorial standards and practices page.
