Digital mental health company Cerebral is mixing up its leadership team. The shakeup comes as the startup responds to recent criticism over its prescribing practices.
Specifically, Cerebral is promoting current CMO Dr. David Mou to president and hiring Virginia Commonwealth University’s former chief ethics and compliance officer, Jacqueline Kniska, to head its compliance team. Meanwhile, CFO Margaret Miller is stepping down as part of a decision “made mutually” between the two parties.
“This is a step to ensure that clinical quality and safety are at the forefront of every decision that we make as an organization,” Kyle Robertson, CEO of Cerebral, said in a Linkedin statement about Mou’s promotion.
A trained psychiatrist, Mou has a degree from Harvard Medical School. During Mou’s tenure at Cerebral, he was responsible for creating the clinical quality and clinical safety departments, according to a Cerebral announcement. Mou will continue to also serve as the CMO for the company.
“We are making a difference in people’s lives, and we are doing it with safety and clinical quality as our top priorities,” Mou said in a related press release.
Kniska joined Cerebral in March and is a lawyer by training.
This news coincides with the announcement that the company will no longer prescribe controlled ADHD medications for new patients as of May 9. Existing patients will still be able to get their prescriptions filled.
Moving forward, Robertson also pledges to add tools for clinicians to help safeguard ADHD prescribing practices.
“[W]e will continue to internally look at our own practices, and identify how we can ensure we are safely deploying all of our offerings,” Robertson wrote in the post.
It is unclear how much this move will impact the company’s total business model. Mou said that treating ADHD is a small percentage of the company’s total business, during a fireside chat at the American Telemedicine Association on Sunday.
Over the last few months, the company has faced public scrutiny over prescribing practices. In March, Bloomberg reported that Cerebral’s focus on medication prescribing and management has led to clinicians pushing medications.
Truepill stopped filling Cerebral prescriptions of Adderall, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Additionally, WSJ reported that CVS Health (NYSE: CVS) previously blocked certain Cerebral prescribers from prescribing Adderall.
“As we look to the future and build on our progress,” Robertson said in the Linkedin post. “I want to reemphasize that the foundation of this company is built on evidence-based, ethical, and compliant practices so that our clients can receive the highest quality of care and achieve the best clinical outcomes.”
It’s not only the startup’s prescribing practices under fire, but also its employment history. Earlier this year the company changed the payment structure for its W-2 clinicians from salaried to hourly. Then in March, reports surfaced that the company planned to to outsource its care coordinator roles to the Philippines.
The digital health unicorn was founded in 2019 and raised a whopping $462 million in funding. Its last funding round brought the company’s total valuation to $4.8 billion.
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