Novo Nordisk, maker of Ozempic and Wegovy, lists the telehealth company LifeMD on its website as a provider that offers “legitimate medicine sourcing and patient support” for people seeking GLP-1 drugs. But some former employees describe LifeMD differently, as a company that has sought to maximize the volume of prescriptions it doles out at the expense of patient safety.
Former workers told STAT that providers were pressed to expedite their work to a pace that was not clinically responsible, with two of them saying providers at times were expected to review the cases of 25 people per hour based only on electronic forms the patients filled out — the equivalent of spending about two minutes on each case.
The company also discouraged providers from asking what they felt were medically relevant questions to patients, so that they don’t “delay care,” former employees said.
