The sordid and still-in-progress tale of a company called DoneFirst.
DoneFirst is essentially a telehealth Internet provider for ADHD meds. ADHD medications are mostly all Schedule I, "high potential for abuse" drugs. Meth-lite, essentially and at the risk of raising Internet Culture Ire.
The idea behind Done: go online, chat with doctor, get prescription.
It opened during the COVID pandemic, taking advantage of some loosened guidelines to allow more freedom in telehealth due to less in-person capacity. DoneFirst got some venture capitalist money, although I don't know how much. A similar company Cerebral was valued at one point at $4.8 billion.
This DoneFirst company was essentially a scam and full of fraud. They were apparently just trying to fill prescriptions and scraping the bottom of the barrel for doctors and such. There were many instances of patients posting reviews and on social media with stories remarkably consistent in that they paid, and then couldn't get meds, and then couldn't contact customer support or get a refund from Done. Apparently, the experience for employees and doctors working on the inside of the service wasn't much better.
There are other instances of DEA attentions back as early as 2022 and spamming ads on social media -- all of which was also done by Cerebral and presumably other telehealth companies. But apparently other companies were smarter and stopped prescribing controlled substances (e.g., Cerebral in 2022) whereas Done carried right onward and forthward with the prescription-mill-dispensing.
Annnnnnnd now there's this: the DoneFirst CEO and head doctor-person arrested and DOJ charged with prescription fraud to the tune of 40 million pills for the moneys of $100 million.
Links
- Hospitalogy - Done is Done: How Ruthia He turned ADHD Telehealth Platform Done into a pill mill, exploiting patients for profit. -- a much lengthier, much better article about this whole thing.
- ADHD - A Lifelong Struggle -- a good experience about ADHD.
- AskJan ADHD -- a good list of workplace accommodations for ADHD.
- Club Med - Dispatches from the Adderall Epidemic -- various perspectives on Adderall, from the diagnosed to the undiagnosed.