Doximity’s Misinformation Problem; CDC’s Provincetown Tip; Surgeons, Devices & Harm

Welcome to the latest edition of Investigative Roundup, highlighting some of the best investigative reporting on healthcare each week.

Doximity Full of Vaccine Misinformation

A plethora of posts made by physicians on Doximity — known as the “LinkedIn for doctors” — contain factually inaccurate information about COVID-19 vaccines, CNBC reported, citing dozens of screenshots and descriptions of posts shared with the outlet.

“You rarely get to the level of microchips in vaccines, but a lot of this stuff is pretty close to it,” a retired psychiatrist, told CNBC.

Malarik — who currently volunteers his time for vaccination efforts — told CNBC that it is “baffling” to see the same kind of misinformation on Doximity as on Facebook and YouTube, where conspiracy theories continue to spread. For example, several comments posted on Doximity by people with the initials MD or DO refer to COVID vaccines as experimental or deadly, and call Anthony Fauci, MD, the White House chief medical advisor, “Fauxi.”

“For Doximity, which stayed largely under the radar prior to its IPO [in June], medical misinformation presents a distinct challenge as the San Francisco-based company seeks to grow its user base and remain a source for high-quality reliable data while also navigating the tricky waters of content moderation,” the article stated.

Doximity told CNBC in an emailed statement that it supports the exchange of ideas among its members on science and medical news, but that the posting of medical misinformation is prohibited.

“Like most virtual communities, we have community guidelines in place to ensure that Doximity remains a safe and respectful environment,” Doximity told CNBC. “We employ a rigorous clinical review process, staffed by physicians, to evaluate member comments that are flagged as being potential misinformation.”

Gay Community Helped CDC ID Provincetown Outbreak

A tip from NYC data scientist Michael Donnelly — who had started publishing his own COVID-19 data reports early in the pandemic — helped the CDC identify a recent and important cluster of cases in Provincetown, Massachusetts, NPR reported.

Donnelly followed leads from his personal network, documented more than 50 breakthrough cases in real-time, and shared it with the CDC, NPR reported.

“The speed of the investigation — and the exceptional participation from the mostly gay men involved in the outbreak — helped the CDC learn new information about the delta variant,” the article stated. “And it was that new information, in part, that prompted the agency to change its guidance for how vaccinated people should keep themselves safe at this stage of the pandemic — including a return to masking indoors.”

Though Donnelly didn’t travel to Provincetown with his husband for the Fourth of July, his friends who were there told him about it. After receiving a bevy of texts from fully vaccinated friends testing positive for COVID, Donnelly began thinking that, “given that vaccination rates were really high among the gay community and in Provincetown, ‘the odds don’t really add up,'” NPR wrote.

Donnelly spent several days contacting people he knew and taking notes on their COVID statuses, symptoms, and vaccination histories. The men Donnelly reached out to were all “eager to help.” Donnelly next contacted Demetre Daskalakis, a deputy incident manager for the CDC’s COVID Response, whom he knew from when Daskalakis worked for the New York City health department.

“It’s quite certain that if we didn’t have the heads-up from Michael — because of what he was seeing among his friends with his statistician hat on — we wouldn’t have heard about it as rapidly,” Daskalakis told NPR.

“I get goose bumps thinking about it,” Daskalakis told NPR. “Community plus public health is magic.”

Ties Between Device Makers and Surgeons Causing Harm?

Orthopedic device sales amounted to tens of billions of dollars in 2019, as sales reps continued to “cozy up” to surgeons in the operating room, Kaiser Health News reported. However, the same aspects of those relationships that many in the industry laud as beneficial may also be causing harm.

Device makers train sales reps to offer surgeons technical guidance in the operating room; they also pay surgeons to tout implants at medical conferences, and athletes for celebrity endorsements.

“The industry says these practices help ensure that patients receive the highest-quality care,” KHN wrote. “But a KHN investigation found these practices also have been blamed for contributing to serious patient harm in thousands of medical malpractice, product liability, and whistleblower lawsuits filed over the past decade.”

Some patients allege they were injured after sales reps for device makers sold wrong-size or defective implants, KHN reported. Others allege device makers misled doctors about the safety and durability of products.

There are still more patients and whistleblowers who say device makers fail to report injury-causing defects to federal regulators even though they are required to do so, KHN added. And some say device makers distribute millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to surgeons.

In a complementary piece, KHN reported that it found hundreds of orthopedists and neurosurgeons have cashed in on stakes in orthopedic implant companies. Oftentimes those medical professionals have invested little or no money in the companies, and are cashing in amid ongoing ethical and legal concerns.