Matthew Truebe, formerly the vice president of product and engineering at Cerebral Inc., alleges that he was retaliated against after raising questions about how the company handles prescription medication.
As reported by Bloomberg Law, Truebe alleges he was fired a year after being hired because he apparently refused to sign an amendment to his employment agreement that retroactively reduced his company stock options and gagged him from discussing the company’s prescribing practices.
“We do not comment on the specifics of pending litigation but we believe that the claims alleged in the complaint are without merit,” a representative of the company said in a statement. “We intend to vigorously defend this matter.”
The suit alleges that Cerebral’s CEO threatened to fire Truebe if he didn’t sign the amendment.
This confrontation with the company and with Robertson reportedly came after Truebe raised concerns about how Cerebral responded to patient overdoses, the existence of over 2,000 duplicate shipping addresses in the patient database, and an apparent patient data breach.
Truebe’s suit alleges that the company’s practices “egregiously put profits and growth before patient safety.” It also implies that Cerebral is unethical in its approach to managing controlled substances that it prescribes for behavioral health conditions such as ADHD.
Common medications for ADHD — Ritalin and Adderall — are under the same Drug Enforcement Administration controlled substance schedule as cocaine. The DEA categorizes substances “based upon the substance’s accepted medical use, potential for abuse, and safety or dependence liability.”
Founded in 2019, Cerebral has raised a total of $462 million in investor dollars. As of December 2021, the company’s total valuation was roughly $4.8 billion.
In March 2022, the company came under fire after Bloomberg published a feature alleging its focus on prescribing and managing medications could lead to providers pushing too many medications.
Roughly a month after this article the Wall Street Journal reported that clinicians from Done Health and Cerebral Inc. had their prescriptions blocked at pharmacies including Walmart and CVS.
Cerebral faced additional scrutiny when reports surfaced that it planned to ship a large portion of its care coordinator roles to the Philippines.
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