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als RSS Feed abonnieren📚 Practice Fusion, Once Backed By Top VCs, Pushed Doctors To Prescribe Opioids in Kickback Scheme
💡 Newskategorie: IT Security Nachrichten
🔗 Quelle: slashdot.org
Practice Fusion, a medical records startup that attracted more than $150 million from VCs, including at Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins, and Artis Ventures, has received its share of negative press since selling to its older, publicly traded rival Allscripts in a $100 million cash deal in early 2018. Yet it appears that Practice Fusion, founded in 2005, was run even more poorly than has been previously reported. TechCrunch: In fact, the company was just tied to the drug overdose epidemic that has killed tens of thousands of Americans in just the last few years alone. How is it possible that a seemingly boring, venture-backed, San Francisco-based medical records startup could have that kind of impact? In a word: kickbacks. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Practice Fusion solicited and received pay from an (unnamed for now) major opioid company in exchange for using its EHR software to influence doctors in the act of prescribing opioid pain medications. Specifically, according to court documents released earlier today by federal prosecutors in Vermont, Practice Fusion solicited a nearly $1 million payment from the opioid company, promising that in exchange it would create alerts in its software that would cause physicians to write more prescriptions for extended release opioids than were medically needed. Practice Fusion has agreed to pay $145 million to resolve the DOJ's criminal and civil investigations, including a $26 million criminal fine and a $118.6 million civil settlement that "also resolves allegations of kickbacks relating to thirteen other CDS arrangements where Practice Fusion agreed with pharmaceutical companies to implement CDS alerts intended to increase sales of their products."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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