One of Outcome Health's top executives is out as the company continues to recover from a Wall Street Journal report that found it had misled advertisers on the performance of its ads.
Vivek Kundra, a former Salesforce alum and the CIO under President Barack Obama, has left Outcome Health after less than a year with the fast-growing Chicago tech company, according to the Wall Street Journal. Kundra was hired in January as Outcome's executive vice president of provider solutions, and he was promoted to chief operating officer in July.
Outcome Co-Founder and CEO Rishi Shah told the Wall Street journal that Kundra “made a family decision to move on while continuing to believe in the long-term vision for Outcome Health."
In a separate Wall Street Journal story, the newspaper reported that several drug advertisers are suspending their deals with Outcome as a result of the misleading ad allegations. Bristol-Myers Squibb, one of Outcome's reportedly largest advertisers, said it would not renew its ad agreement for 2018, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company was reportedly expected to spend $20 million in advertising with Outcome this year.
Additionally, ad company Omnicom Group is suspending deals with Outcome until the company “conducts a full campaign-level, third-party audit of previously enacted campaigns in 2016 and 2017," according to the Wall Street Journal.
The Journal also found that Interpublic Group, Havas SA and Publicis Groupe SA are "putting deals with Outcome on hold or recommending that clients do so" until Outcome can verify the performance of its ads.
A statement by Shah, posted Monday to Outcome's website, stated that the company has "added several million dollars of new business" in recent weeks, and it is seeing "a roughly 90% commit-to-delivery rate" on its ads.
Outcome hired BPA Worldwide in July to conduct an audit of its ad performance. The audit is ongoing, according to the Journal. An Outcome spokesperson could not provide a specific timetable on when the audit would be completed.
Last month The Wall Street Journal found that Outcome misled advertisers by manipulating data and inflating the performance of its ads. Outcome employees provided inflated data to advertisers and “manipulated third-party analyses showing the effectiveness of the ads,” the Journal found based on accounts from former employees and several advertisers. Outcome put three employees on paid leave as a result of the investigation, including Chief Growth Officer Ashik Desai.
In May, Outcome raised more than $500 million from investors such as Goldman Sachs and Alphabet’s growth equity investment fund CapitalG, making it the most valuable tech company in Chicago at more than $5 billion.
