digital therapeutics
Pear returns: DTx pioneer's substance use treatments back in use
Alex Hogan/STAT
Over a year after Pear Therapeutics filed for bankruptcy and shut down, its smartphone apps for people with substance use disorder and opioid use disorder are again available to patients, I reported exclusively this morning. After acquiring Pear's Food and Drug Administration-cleared apps, called reSET and reSET-O, in December 2023, virtual addiction treatment company PursueCare this month began offering them to its patients.
Unlike Pear, PursueCare has an established business that's covered by insurance it can use to float the apps while it figures out the business side of things. In the short term, PursueCare is offering the apps directly to clinically indicated patents for $90 — patients can earn back $75 of that in rewards for sticking to treatment goals. Patients who can't afford the fee, can get a free version with no rewards. The company will also bill payers for remote therapeutic monitoring. By early next year, PursueCare will make app licenses available to other practices so they can offer the treatments to their patients as well.
PursueCare CEO Nick Mercadante told me that the company does eventually hope insurance will cover the apps, something that Pear struggled with. In the long term, he believes PursueCare's services ought to be paid for in value-based arrangements where the company is compensated for appropriately treating patients rather than for the individual services it provides.
Read more about the realunch and PursueCare's plans here
Deals
Report: Truepill and LetsGetChecked to merge
Pharmacy distribution platform Truepill will be acquired by home testing company LetsGetChecked for $525 million, Axios reported. The deal between the two Optum Ventures portfolio companies hasn't been officially confirmed. During post-pandemic investment boom, investors valued Truepill at $1.6 billion.
The report follows a cascade of bad news for Truepill, which, among other businesses, helps telehealth companies fill prescriptions by mail. Last year the company reached a settlement with the Drug Enforcement Agency for improperly filling prescriptions for controlled substances. To be fair, that was part of a wider crackdown on companies that took advantage of pandemic flexibilities to market easy Adderall prescriptions online. Truepill has undertaken several rounds of layoffs, and its CEO Sid Viswanathan left the company last year. If there's an upside for Truepill right now its that the trend of virtual care companies offering streamlined access to prescriptions online isn't going anywhere.
Telehealth A few notable telehealth reform perspectives
With pandemic telehealth flexibilities headling toward possible expiration, a few new perspectives on what exactly we should do about regulating and paying for telehealth caught my eye this week.
- The flexibilities that expanded access to millions of people on Medicare haven't been made permanent, and the big reason, Lori Uscher-Pines and Ateev Mehrotra argue, is misleading claims that proponents have made about how expanding telehealth access will save money. The evidence of cost-savings, the authors argue, doesn't stand up to scrutiny and improperly frames the debate. The question should not be whether telehealth save money, but "does a new innovation improve health at a reasonable cost?" Also, if you haven't seen my colleague Mohana Ravindranath's look at Mehrotra's work, it's worth your time.
- Elsewhere, James Jolin, Barak, Richman, Carmel Shachar, and Mehrotra survey the options available for reforming licensure regulations so that clinicians can deliver telehealth care across state lines. During the pandemic, restrictions were lifted, and as they've returned it has curtailed access to care, disproportionately impacting people who live near state lines. The authors zero in on certain reforms they see as politically feasible, like coordinated state-based exemptions to licensure requirements. Another option is a federal rule to permit interstate telehealth for specific use cases like clinical trials participation or care for rare diseases. The authors also note that differing state-by-state laws restricting access to abortion, gender-affirming care, and substance use treatment need to be taken into account.
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