Crisis PR, conference room names, & ‘a billion patients a day’

Good morning, and welcome to the month of May.

First up, I want to brief you on a pair of San Francisco health-care startups that each just received some seriously bad news coverage for alleged improper business practices. I also want to examine the way their executives responded.

Let’s start with Nurx, which specializes in prescriptions for birth-control pills to try to differentiate itself from other telemedicine startups pitching online prescriptions for drugs for common medical needs and conditions.

This past Friday, Nurx was the subject of a tough story in the New York Times detailing, among other things, an unusual practice involving orders of birth control pills that bounced in the mail when Nurx’s partner pharmacies tried to send them to customers. When that happened, the pills came back to Nurx’s office, where they were stored in a closet — and then shipped back out to different customers who were missing their pills.

How did Nurx respond? In a post on Medium (where else?) titled “Setting the record straight,” the company fessed up to that practice, calling it “outdated and misguided.” A central part of Nurx’s defense was that it ended the practice nearly a year ago.

All of the drama at Nurx was tame compared to the allegations over at UBiome, which sells tests for the microbiome. The startup had its office searched by the FBI on Friday, as part of an investigation into its billing practices, the Wall Street Journal reported. (In a follow-on story, I reported that the FBI has heard allegations centered around improper billing codes and physician relationships at UBiome.)

And what was the word from UBiome’s leadership? CEO Jessica Richman defended the company’s practices in an interview with the WSJ before the FBI raid. UBiome hasn’t put out its own public statement since the search.

Neither of these stories are over — UBiome’s troubles, in particular, are sure to bring more headlines — but you’d be wise to continue to keep a close watch on what executives are saying, or not saying. They may well generate new case studies in health-care crisis PR.

Now, onto the latest headlines

The University of California, San Francisco, is out with some newsthis morning: It’s launching a five-year initiative to generate research to try to aid in efforts to prevent and end homelessness. The project is being financed with a $30 million donation from the billionaire Salesforcefounder Marc Benioff and his wife, Lynne Benioff. (During last year’s election season, Marc Benioff was outspoken in support of a successful ballot measure to tax large corporations to support homelessness programs in San Francisco.) The initiative — which will explore links to aging, substance abuse, and mental health — comes as researchers and policymakers increasingly think about homelessness and housing insecurity through the lens of health.

In recent months, Facebook has taken heat about how it protects the health data of patients who discuss their conditions in closed groups on the social network. Yesterday, the company announced that it will create a new type of community — health support groups — that will allow users to ask health questions anonymously, my STAT colleague Megan Thielking reports.

One theme that’s surprised me so far in 2019 is a wave of action from social media companies to crack down on anti-vaccination content amid a huge surge in the number of measles cases IRL. The latest such company: the Silicon Valley crowdfunding site Indiegogo, which is working on a new policy that would ban anti-vaccine fundraisers off the platform, BuzzFeed News reported.

My colleague Casey Ross is out with the latest installment of STAT’s ongoing series highlighting influential people at each of the Big Tech companies pushing into health care. This week, Casey mapped out five names you should know at Microsoft, including an executive poached from Google as well as a polyglot who can read more than a dozen languages. (ICYMI, past articles in our series have covered health-focused people at Verily, Amazon, and Apple.)

At the University of Southern California’s medical school, the fellowship in cardiovascular disease was once prestigious. But now, a national oversight panel is effectively shutting it down by revoking its accreditation, the Los Angeles Times reports. Why? The panel didn’t say. But the dean of USC’s medical school said that outside experts had concerns about “resident safety and wellness processes.” In other words: It’s the very same fellowship program that’s been rocked by a scandal centered around allegations that officials didn’t properly investigate when a medical resident accused a fellow in the program of sexually assaulting her.

A Seattle startup called Arivale was built around the promise that testing each person’s genetics, blood, and microbiome could yield insights — which in turn could be harnessed with tailored coaching around wellness and nutrition. But the company shut down unexpectedly last week, letting go all of its approximately 120 employees, GeekWire reported. What went wrong? The company pointed to “the simple fact that the cost of providing the service exceeds what our customers can pay for it.”

In my view, one of the most fascinating parts of the Theranos saga was the bravery and resilience of a pair of 20-something whistleblowers. One of them was former employee Erika Cheung. STAT's executive editor, Rick Berke, sat down with her for a new Q&A that covers how Cheung was duped by Elizabeth Holmes — and why she believes the disgraced ex-CEO should spend at least five years in prison.

Why a hospital system innovator went to Google

I’ve spent this week covering the Milken Institute’s Global Conference — the think tank’s big three-day gathering at a hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. The most memorable moment so far? It came during a panel discussionabout whether big companies can save health care.

One of the panelists was Dr. David Feinberg, a vice president overseeing health initiatives at Google. Feinberg joined Google at the start of this year after running Geisinger, a Pennsylvania hospital system where he earned a reputation as an innovator. On stage during the panel, Feinberg was asked: Why’d you make the move? 

Feinberg’s answer was a long and fascinating one, spanning the arc of his career, but the takeaway was this: He was mesmerized by the idea of seeing “a billion patients a day.” Here’s Feinberg in his own words.

Spotted inside a San Francisco startup

ALL THE CONFERENCE ROOMS HERE ARE NAMED AFTER SMALL MOLECULES. (ATOMWISE)

The other day, I stopped by the downtown San Francisco office of Atomwise, a startup that’s using artificial intelligence to try to identify small-molecule drug candidates with a better chance of working. I was there to discuss news — the company is involved in a new partnershipmeant to bring more drug developers into Y Combinator’s famed accelerator program — but while I was there I got a tour of the office.

I couldn’t help but notice that every Atomwise conference room was named after a small molecule drug, like “dopamine” or “caffeine.” So I asked for the backstory. I learned that Atomwise’s old office was even more nerdy; the conference rooms there were labeled not with words but with chemical structures. That worked OK for the scientists. But it was too much of an ask to tell investors to find their way to a conference room marked only with a wordless diagram of, say, the caffeine molecule, Atomwise’s CEO and founder, Abraham Heifets, told me.