Post by robeiae on Feb 1, 2020 11:25:48 GMT -5
I've read this story three times and I'm still having a hard time grokking it: www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-29/health-records-company-pushed-opioids-to-doctors-in-secret-deal
From it:
First, hats off to our much-maligned federal government for discovering this mess. Second, the opioid manufacturer in question is almost certainly Purdue Pharma. And finally, $145 million?!?!?!? Where the hell did a software company get the cash to agree to such a pay-off (one that suggests it has plenty more cash)?
More on Practice Fusion: techcrunch.com/2020/01/27/practice-fusion-backed-by-top-vcs-before-selling-in-2018-pushed-doctors-to-prescribe-opioids-in-kickback-scheme/
From it:
To doctors opening patients’ electronic records across the U.S., the alert would have looked innocuous enough.
A pop-up would appear, asking about a patient’s level of pain. Then, a drop-down menu would list treatments ranging from a referral to a pain specialist to a prescription for an opioid painkiller.
Click a button, and the program would create a treatment plan. From 2016 to spring 2019, the alert went off about 230 million times.
The tool existed thanks to a secret deal. Its maker, a software company called Practice Fusion, was paid by a major opioid manufacturer to design it in an effort to boost prescriptions for addictive pain pills -- even though overdose deaths had almost tripled during the prior 15 years, creating a public-health disaster. The software was used by tens of thousands of doctors’ offices.
Its existence was revealed this week thanks to a government investigation. Practice Fusion agreed to pay $145 million to resolve civil and criminal cases, according to documents filed in a Vermont federal court.
A pop-up would appear, asking about a patient’s level of pain. Then, a drop-down menu would list treatments ranging from a referral to a pain specialist to a prescription for an opioid painkiller.
Click a button, and the program would create a treatment plan. From 2016 to spring 2019, the alert went off about 230 million times.
The tool existed thanks to a secret deal. Its maker, a software company called Practice Fusion, was paid by a major opioid manufacturer to design it in an effort to boost prescriptions for addictive pain pills -- even though overdose deaths had almost tripled during the prior 15 years, creating a public-health disaster. The software was used by tens of thousands of doctors’ offices.
Its existence was revealed this week thanks to a government investigation. Practice Fusion agreed to pay $145 million to resolve civil and criminal cases, according to documents filed in a Vermont federal court.
More on Practice Fusion: techcrunch.com/2020/01/27/practice-fusion-backed-by-top-vcs-before-selling-in-2018-pushed-doctors-to-prescribe-opioids-in-kickback-scheme/