Telehealth Calls Teen Suicide Outlier

Telehealth startup is accused of treating a teen with drugs but without parents’ knowledge until day he committed suicide? Company didn’t use software to flag kid as minor but State rules suggests that was ok? Really?

As the WSJ investigation revealed, “Telehealth startup Cerebral Inc. had software that could verify customer IDs [e.g., age] but didn’t use it to check birth dates and other details, a policy that resulted in some minors being treated without parental consent … An internal memo reviewed by the Journal described the software ID check as an impediment to customer retention when Cerebral was trying to quickly enroll tens of thousands of customers for mental-health treatment during the Covid-19 pandemic. The company used software to capture selfies of patients but relied on clinicians to verify details such as ages during 30-minute video chats.”

Cerebral insists it “provided much-needed care to hundreds of thousands of patients,” and pretty much followed existing law in doing so. A spokesperson told the WSJ it regretted what happened to the 17-yr-old son of Wendi & Todd Kroll, but their son had lied about his age. He added how rare an “outlier” the tragedy was. No doubt. But, in its hasty “mining” for new clients panicked by the pandemic, you’d think they’d have been extra sure to know the ages of their new clients? And, especially after any client expressed SUICIDAL thoughts to their tele-clinicians, they’d contact the parents (or spouse or nearest relative) asap to help deal with the obvious life and death reality?

Davd Soul