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STAT+: Recent pharma-telehealth partnerships feel ‘black boxy,’ and why that’s problematic
A new kind of pharma-telehealth partnership has come under scrutiny over concerns that such an arrangement could lead to inappropriate prescriptions and poor care.
In recent months, a new kind of partnership between telehealth companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers has come under scrutiny over concerns that such arrangements could lead to inappropriate prescriptions and poor care. Eli Lilly and Pfizer, along with five telehealth companies accessible through the pharma companies’ websites, have recently received letters from four senators echoing those concerns, asking questions about care, prescription volume, and the flow of data and money between the firms.
The lawmakers want to determine whether pharma-telehealth deals may be violating the federal anti-kickback statute. That question has also piqued the interest of three health policy researchers at Brown University. When Ateev Mehrotra and Olivier Wouters — who have expertise in telehealth and pharmaceutical policy, respectively — started discussing these novel arrangements, they had a head-scratching moment. “Both of us got stuck because we’re like, ‘This seems kind of fishy,’” Mehrotra told STAT. “‘I don’t know, what do you think?’”
They brought in colleague Erin Fuse Brown for legal perspective, and on Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the trio highlighted how partnerships between telehealth and pharma could enable access to necessary care — as well as their potential to induce medically unnecessary and expensive prescriptions. That’s another growing concern for legislators, as patients see more ads on social media from telehealth companies and influencers that aren’t subject to the same requirements as pharma ads.
