Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 4/10/23

I was dismayed to see an announcement over the weekend that Pear Therapeutics has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and has drastically scaled back its operations. The part of this story that isn’t obvious to many is that for some patients, prescription digital therapeutics may be a major part of their opioid treatment care plan. The Pear Therapeutics website notes that it is no longer accepting new prescriptions for its three major products, nor will refills be dispensed. They “will attempt to keep our products available for patients who are already using the products for the duration of the current fill of their prescription, but there can be no assurance that we will be able to do so.”

The company is seeking a sale of the business or assets, but who knows how this will unfold? Prescription digital therapeutics has been a promising technology and the ReSET product from Pear Therapeutics was the first approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. I hope this isn’t the beginning of the end for this type of treatment option.

The team at KRIS 6 news in Corpus Christi reports that a Texas teen posed as a physician assistant at two hospitals for nearly a month. The impersonator showed up in Corpus Christi Medical Center’s Bay Area Hospital wearing newly purchased scrubs and asked for a badge, stating that he was a traveling physician assistant. A volunteer coordinator who was covering the human resources office while its staff was out of the office made him a badge. The suspect began to interact with staff, not only at that facility, but also at Doctors Regional Hospital. After he was found loitering in an intensive care unit and talking about topics that seemed unusual, staff became suspicious. He told staff that he was a student at Stevens College in Missouri, which is a women’s college, raising concerns. Nurses found the suspect’s social media accounts, identified him as an impostor, and had him escorted from the facility.

A hospital spokesperson noted that the suspect didn’t interact with patients and that they were assisting in the law enforcement investigation. However, records show that his badge was used to access the emergency department, intensive care unit, operating rooms, cardiac catheterization lab, and the newborn nursery. Badge records show that tried to access several other areas without success, including the operating room’s locker room and the physician parking area. Investigators noted that the suspect also has bank fraud charges against him in Missouri. A search of his room at a local hotel uncovered a homemade firearm, a bulletproof vest, ammunition, firearms-related accessories, and a shirt with “sheriff” printed on it, raising suspicions that he was planning to impersonate a law enforcement officer. He was also found to have been driving a Crown Victoria police interceptor with accessories that are consistent with a law enforcement vehicle. They also determined that he tried to obtain a badge at Driscoll Children’s Hospital, but was unable to do so.

Following arrest, the suspect was released on bond then arrested shortly thereafter, having violated his GPS tracking system limitations nearly 200 times. He entered a guilty plea to multiple third-degree felonies and was sentenced in such a way that his conviction will be removed from his record after six years, as long as he completes requirements such as completing a GED or a high school diploma, maintaining a required curfew, and meeting with a community supervision officer. He immediately violated the terms of his sentencing agreement by leaving the state.

This story definitely falls under the category of “you can’t make this up,” but it’s shocking that he was able to obtain an ID badge in the first place. The volunteer who started the ID process was terminated from the hospital, even after notifying her supervisors of the strange situation the same day it happened. She was quoted as saying that the hospital “basically beat it into our heads that we needed to be all about customer service” and that’s why she started the process. Maybe having this story circulate will motivate facilities to check their processes and make sure their policies are a little tighter than those at the facility in question.

The last thing that caught my attention this weekend (during a major attempt at cleaning up my inbox) was a research article in JAMA that looked at the “Association Between Drug Characteristics and Manufacturer Spending on Direct-to-Consumer Advertising.” My understanding is that the US is one of a few countries that allow drug manufacturers to advertise prescription-only products to patients. (It might be one of two, with New Zealand being the other, but I’m running into some conflicting data.) The authors looked at 150 prescription drugs with the highest US sales in 2020 and found that drugs with lower clinical benefit received a higher portion of promotional spending.

As a practicing physician, I spend entirely too much of my time explaining to patients that although I appreciate the idea of “ask your doctor if this medication is right for you,” either the medication in question isn’t indicated for any of the conditions with which they have been diagnosed or that there are a number of inexpensive generic medications that have been proven to treat a condition just as well or better than the drug being advertised. It’s usually not a quick conversation, and ultimately saying no has a negative effect on patient satisfaction scores, but it’s the right thing to do.

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs didn’t start in the US until the mid-1980s. In speaking to colleagues, I haven’t yet found anyone who thinks that the practice has been shown to deliver better outcomes for patients. For those of us trying to deliver high-quality care and being faced with EHR alerts telling us to go with better options that are well proven for our patients, it’s one more frustration that contributes to burnout. It’s a major dissatisfier for physicians, but money talks, so I don’t see the practice being changed any time soon. I’d personally love to see all the money that is being dumped into DTC be diverted into health literacy and patient education instead, but that’s definitely a fever dream.

Since we’re in the healthcare IT news doldrums in the run up to HIMSS, what articles or news stories caught your attention this week? Leave a comment or email me.

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