Telehealth startup Cerebral has come under scrutiny amid allegations that its clinicians are writing too many prescriptions for Adderall and other stimulants.
Below is a timeline of the initial accusations to its present-day ongoing investigation:
March 11: About 27 former employees of telehealth app Cerebral accused the company of fueling the addiction crisis. Employees told Bloomberg they believed Cerebral was taking advantage of prescribing regulations, which were relaxed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Former employees also expressed concerns that appointments were too short, follow-up sessions were scheduled infrequently and advertisements were too aggressive.
April 27: Matthew Truebe, former vice president of product and engineering at Cerebral, filed a lawsuit against the company's CEO Kyle Robertson, alleging that Mr. Robertson asked employees to track the relationship between stimulant prescriptions for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and patient retention. In the suit, Mr. Truebe claims the company's prescribing practices "consistently and at times egregiously put profits and growth before patient safety." Mr. Truebe was fired in part for raising concerns about the company's prescribing practices.
May 4: Cerebral received a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York. The subpoena was issued to Cerebral Medical Group, the corporation it uses to contract with clinicians and provide healthcare services. The company said it intends to cooperate with the investigation and that no regulatory or law-enforcement authority has accused it of violating any law. The subpoena came shortly after the company started to receive allegations of overprescribing controlled substances.
May 9: Cerebral paused prescribing controlled substances such as Adderall to treat ADHD in new patients.
May 10: Cerebral said it will update the language on its advertisements, review its existing promotional efforts and form a committee — composed of clinical and brand team members — to review paid social media ads to reflect the suspension of controlled substance prescriptions for new patients after allegations of overprescribing by providers surfaced.
May 17: The board of Cerebral voted to replace co-founder Kyle Robertson. Mr. Robertson called the move illegal.
May 26: CVS Health said that it would stop filling prescriptions for controlled substances from Cerebral.
The company has denied the allegations in the employee lawsuit were false and said it doesn't pressure its clinicians to prescribe stimulants.