PillPack, the online pharmacy that Amazon bought in 2018, has run into a big issue when it comes to determining patient prescription history, according to a report by CNBC.
The company Surescripts, which manages online prescriptions, said it will cut ties with ReMy Health over patient data issues. PillPack had a deal with ReMy that allowed it to access patient history that was obtained by Surescripts.
PillPack can no longer access that data, meaning it has to either rely on patient memory (which can be faulty and even dangerous) or manually call a doctor, which is time-consuming.
Surescripts said it did a probe into ReMy Health’s service and found some issues that caused the company to end their business relationship. While no flagrant patient privacy violations were mentioned, other troubling issues were discovered. Surescripts said it was “turning the matter over to the FBI for further investigation.”
“Surescripts has uncovered evidence that the fraud in connection with ReMy Health’s requests for patient data was not limited to patient medication history information,” said the company’s CEO Tom Skelton. “This evidence shows the fraud extended to requests for patient health insurance and prescription price information that ReMy Health provided to drug marketing websites.”
Skelton added that the amount of activity was “very small” but that it had to take the step to protect the “integrity of its network.”
Surescripts was sued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in April over “illegal monopolization of e-prescription markets.”
Meanwhile, ReMy CEO Aaron Crittenden denied the allegations and said the company’s mission is to make healthcare more affordable, which “should not be a threatening proposition to anyone. We have never provided any data from the Surescripts network to pharmaceutical companies for marketing purposes.”
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