The Done Global Case Isn’t Just Criminal. It’s Medical Malpractice at a National Scale.
This week’s Done Global convictions are already being treated as a landmark criminal prosecution of a telehealth company. Two people were found guilty of conspiring to distribute controlled substances, and the headlines have understandably focused on the scale of the scheme and the millions of pills involved. But before we reduce this to a story about illegal drug distribution, we need to say something far more important and far more fundamental. This isn’t just a criminal case. What Done Global did is medical malpractice because the company created a system where doctors could not meet the basic medical standard of care, and patients were harmed as a result. Telehealth does not get a different rulebook. When a platform pressures clinicians to prescribe stimulants without meaningful evaluation and those decisions hurt patients, that is malpractice by definition.
That point matters because it reframes everything that follows. Malpractice is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a specific legal concept built on a simple expectation: if you hold yourself out as a healthcare provider, you must provide care that meets the accepted medical standard. If you fail to do that and a patient is harmed, that is malpractice. The allegations against Done describe a system in which meeting that standard was not merely difficult. It was structurally impossible.
Prosecutors say Done marketed “easy access” to Adderall and other Schedule II stimulants while building a platform that limited clinical discretion and discouraged proper medical evaluation. That is not the practice of medicine. It is the appearance of medicine layered over a business model built for speed and subscription volume. When the medical judgment disappears, the duty of care vanishes with it. What remains is a dangerous imitation of healthcare, and patients pay the price.
Telehealth only works when the medicine remains real. A clinician still has to take a meaningful history, understand the patient’s condition, and make an individualized determination about whether a controlled substance is medically necessary. That obligation does not weaken when the visit happens on a screen. If anything, it strengthens, because the doctor has to compensate for the limitations of virtual care. Prescribing stimulants after a cursory exchange or a checklist is the opposite of that standard. It is a breach of duty.
And the consequences were not hypothetical. The ripple effects were felt across the country during the 2022 Adderall shortage. Families who relied on medication to help their children focus and function suddenly found empty pharmacy shelves. Adults who depended on stimulants to work safely and effectively were left scrambling. Physicians tried to find alternative treatments that were less effective or carried more side effects. A shortage that was already painful became worse. Flooding the system with medically unnecessary prescriptions during a fragile supply moment was not simply irresponsible. It was foreseeably harmful, and foreseeability is one of the cornerstones of malpractice analysis.
One of the truths that emerges again and again in my work representing patients is that the worst medical injuries rarely come from one careless clinician. They come from systems built so poorly that safe care cannot happen. If the allegations are accurate, Done created exactly such a system. Clinicians reportedly felt pressured to move quickly. Some felt they risked losing work if they slowed the pace or pushed back against unsafe prescribing. Others said they lacked the time or tools to make responsible medical decisions. When a company designs a healthcare platform that makes the standard of care unreachable, the resulting injuries are not accidents. They are the predictable outcome of the structure.
This is where telehealth has to confront its future honestly. Digital medicine has enormous value. It expands access, reduces geographic barriers, and makes treatment easier for people who would otherwise go without care. Telehealth is not the problem. But telehealth is still medicine. The protections that safeguard patients in traditional settings must carry over seamlessly to digital ones. A company cannot claim to provide healthcare while sidelining the very medical judgment that defines healthcare.
There is a growing narrative that the Done Global case signals a crackdown on telehealth itself. That is not the lesson we should take. The lesson is that telehealth must be practiced with the same rigor and the same respect for medical standards as any other mode of care. That includes thorough evaluations, accurate documentation, independent clinical judgment, and an internal culture that prioritizes patient safety ahead of business metrics. Without those elements, telehealth becomes a delivery vehicle for malpractice on a broader scale than we have ever seen in traditional healthcare.
The federal prosecutor in this case said that medical necessity must always drive decisions about controlled substances. That principle has guided healthcare for decades. In responsible telehealth systems, it continues to guide care. But in the environment prosecutors described, medical necessity was not the first question. It was barely a question at all. When business incentives overshadow medical ethics, patient harm is guaranteed.
The Done case shows us that the intersection of technology and medicine can produce extraordinary benefits or extraordinary risks. Modern healthcare depends on the public’s trust that when they see a clinician, whether in person or online, they will receive real medical care. That trust evaporates when a platform treats prescriptions as subscription perks rather than clinical tools. And once that trust is lost, patients suffer long before the criminal charges arrive.
This case will be remembered for the convictions, the staggering scale of the scheme, and the government’s warning shot to digital health companies. But it should also be recognized as a profound example of medical malpractice in the digital age. Not metaphoric malpractice. Not the rhetorical kind. Actual malpractice: a breach of the medical standard of care that inflicted foreseeable harm on real people who relied on what they thought was legitimate treatment.
Telehealth can and should continue to transform modern medicine. It can widen access, reduce inequities, and provide care to people who have been historically overlooked. But none of that will matter if companies forget that the practice of medicine must remain at the center of everything they do. Technology can change the format of care. It cannot change the responsibility of care.
The Done Global case is a reminder that the law’s role in healthcare is not limited to punishing criminal conduct. It also protects patients from unsafe systems. As telehealth continues to grow, the standard of care must grow with it, not shrink beneath it. If we get that right, telehealth will thrive. If we ignore it, we will see more cases like this one, and more patients caught in systems that look like healthcare but do not act like it.
About Sean C. Domnick
Sean C. Domnick is a Shareholder at Rafferty Domnick Cunningham & Yaffa, a preeminent national boutique law firm based in Palm Beach Gardens and Pensacola, Florida.
