Teladoc Fights Back
This blog noted a few weeks ago that telehealth is facing headwinds. Teladoc, a Texas-based provider of telemedicine services, was being stifled by the Texas Medical Board.
Now, Teladoc has filed both an Initial Public Offering (IPO) and a lawsuit against the Texas Medical Board on antitrust grounds:
The suit alleges that theTexas Medical Board allowed telemedicine to freely operate until 2009, as “telehealth providers, and in particular Teladoc, began to expand in scale.” It continues: “the competitive threat to traditional office- and hospital-based physicians became clear. The TMB began working to stamp out this threat to competing physicians.”
All in all, I’d prefer to see this resolved by the state legislature if the Texas Medical Board itself cannot fix itself. Nevertheless, it is good to see that Teladoc is not quitting without a fight.
Teladoc has won the first round in federal court: https://www.texastribune.org/2015/05/30/teladoc-scores-early-victory-against-medical-board/.