TSH value. The patient was already on thyroid medication and the
result suggested that her dose needed to be raised. Before she did
anything, Dr. Stewart sent the patient to get retested at Sonora Quest,
a joint venture of Quest and the hospital system Banner Health. The
Sonora Quest result came back normal. Had she trusted the Theranos
result and increased the patient’s medication dosage, the outcome
could have been disastrous, Dr. Stewart said. The patient was
pregnant. Increasing her dosage would have made her levels of thyroid
hormone too high and put her pregnancy at risk.
I also met with Dr. Gary Betz, a family practitioner in another part
of town who had stopped sending his patients to Theranos after a bad
experience involving one of them the previous summer. That patient,
also a woman, was on medication to reduce her blood pressure. One of
the medicine’s potential side effects was high potassium, so Dr. Betz
monitored her blood regularly. After Theranos reported a near critical
potassium value for the patient, a nurse in Dr. Betz’s office sent her
back there to get tested again to make sure the result was correct. But
during the second visit, the phlebotomist made three unsuccessful
attempts to draw her blood and then sent her home. Dr. Betz was
furious when he found out the next day: if the original result was
correct, it was imperative that he get confirmation of it as soon as
possible so he could make changes to her treatment. He sent the
patient to get retested at Sonora Quest. As it turned out, it was another
false alarm: the potassium value Sonora Quest reported that evening
was much lower than the Theranos result and well within the normal
range. Dr. Betz told me the episode had shattered his trust in
Theranos.
As I was wrapping up my trip, I got an email from someone named
Matthew Traub. He worked for a public relations firm called DKC and
said he represented Theranos. He understood I was working on a story
about the company and wanted to know if there was any information
he could help me with. The cat was out of the bag, which was just as
well. I had planned on contacting the company as soon as I got back to
New York. At the Journal, we had a cardinal rule called “No
surprises.” We never went to press with a story without informing the