patients to the emergency room because of a frightening lab report
from the company only to find out it was a false alarm. I flew to
Phoenix to meet Dr. Sundene and her patient. While there, I also
planned to drop in unannounced on other physician practices that
used Theranos for their lab tests. I’d gotten the names of a half dozen
from an industry source.
Dr. Sundene’s patient, Maureen Glunz, agreed to meet at a
Starbucks near her home. A petite woman in her mid-fifties, she was
Exhibit A for one of the two scenarios Alan Beam worried about. The
lab report she’d received from Theranos had shown abnormally
elevated results for calcium, protein, glucose, and three liver enzymes.
Since she had complained of ringing in her ear (later determined to be
caused by lack of sleep), Dr. Sundene had worried she might be on the
cusp of a stroke and sent her straight to the hospital. Glunz had spent
four hours in the emergency room on the eve of Thanksgiving while
doctors ran a battery of tests on her, including a CT scan. She’d been
discharged after a new set of blood tests performed by the hospital’s
lab came back normal. That hadn’t been the end of it, however. As a
precaution, she’d undergone two MRIs during the ensuing week. She
said she’d finally stopped worrying when those had come back normal
too.
Glunz’s case was compelling because it showed both the emotional
and the financial toll of a health scare brought on by inaccurate
results. As an independent real estate broker, she was self-insured and
had a health plan with a high deductible. The ER visit and subsequent
MRIs had cost three thousand dollars—a sum she’d had to pay out of
her own pocket.
When I met with Dr. Sundene at her office, I learned that Glunz
wasn’t the only patient whose results she’d found suspect. She told me
more than a dozen of her patients had tested suspiciously high for
potassium and calcium and she doubted the accuracy of those results
as well. She had written Theranos a letter to complain but the
company hadn’t even acknowledged it.
With Dr. Sundene’s help, I decided to conduct a little experiment.
She wrote me a lab order and I took it to the Walgreens closest to my