Who does the following story remind you of? Except Proove pays $150 to physician per test, right?
Dr. Scott Wilson often participated in medical studies, so the one being proposed by the New Orleans laboratory Renaissance RX seemed reasonable.
An assistant would swab inside the cheeks of qualified patients and send the samples off to the company, which was doing research in the fast-growing arena of personalized genetic medicine.
Dr. Wilson signed on to what was supposed to be one of the largest and most definitive studies of its kind. In exchange, he and other doctors would be paid $75 for every patient they enrolled and tracked.
But Dr. Wilson left the study last year, saying the company pressured doctors to enroll patients regardless of whether they were eligible. In a lawsuit, he also accused the company of improper billing. Renaissance denies the accusations.
The story of Renaissance offers a view inside the intoxicating brew of hype and hope in the field of genetic testing. All over the country, labs and research firms are popping up, eager to study strands of DNA to better identify who is at risk for developing a disease, to guide existing treatments and to develop new ones. But the troubles at Renaissance speak volumes about how difficult it is for Medicare and private insurers to keep up with the proliferation of tests being offered.