Theranos has relied on spin and secrecy, even as the blood-testing firm faces regulatory sanctions and other woes, the Wall Street Journal writes.
The Journal's John Carreyrou writes that company CEO and founder Elizabeth Holmes told employees in slideshow presentation last month that the company has developed more than 300 tests that rely on a small amount of blood, but left out that those tests were still in the research stage. This omission, he adds, didn't go unnoticed by some employees.
Carreyrou says that plus the company's recent voiding of tens of thousands of test results has eaten away employee trust. Employees, he says, found out about those corrected results a month after regulators did, when the Journal reported it. He adds that employees further learned about the full results of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services inspection when the agency released its report in April.
Even as the company grapples with regulatory issues — CMS has banned Holmes from owning or operating a clinical lab — lawsuits, and investigations, it has been presenting a careful image, the Journal says. It reports that Holmes has met with the TV host Charlie Rose and has contacted Jason Blum, the executive producer of HBO's "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst."
The Journal notes that a Theranos spokesperson says the company doesn't comment on internal meetings and that its employees "are the soul of a company committed to providing actionable, affordable health-care information."