The founder’s six-year sentence shows how remote care can scale dangerous prescribing, but experts say the lesson is stronger clinical safeguards, not abandoning telehealth.
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Two telehealth executives at Done Global were charged for a scheme to distribute Adderall. The trial and subsequent sentencing are indicative of the future of telehealth as a whole.
Done Global was built on the promise to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but the start-up was found guilty of organizing a scheme to illegally distribute over 37 million pills of Adderall.
Ruthia He, the founder and former CEO of Done Global, was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $1 million. According to the Department of Justice, He used her company’s platform, compensation structure, and clinical protocols to unlawfully distribute more than 37 million Adderall pills, defraud insurers of over $12 million, and obstruct the ensuing federal investigation.
Clinicians who worked for the California-based digital mental health company signed prescriptions for Adderall every 30 seconds. Executives were found to pressure the clinicians to prescribe the stimulants to those who they did not believe had the disorder. Refills of the medication were automatically authorized—even for patients who had died.
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The prevalence of telehealth companies skyrocketed during the Covid pandemic lockdowns, a time where many were stuck indoors. Simultaneously, the government relaxed restrictions on online prescriptions for such controlled substances like Adderall.
According to The New York Times, Done Global spent more than $40 million on social media advertisements at the time, frequently featuring young people “discovering” they had ADHD. Some of the advertisements even tricked people into thinking they needed stimulants when they were just suffering from “inattentiveness due to aging or lack of structure,” the Justice Department said.
The problem wasn’t telehealth alone
Ateev Mehrotra, MD, MPH, chair of health services, policy, and practice at Brown University School of Public Health told Inc. that though the telehealth structure isn’t solely to blame for rise in over-prescribing stimulant medication, the condition being treated is also an important aspect of the Done Global case.