According to health officials in Florida and Tennessee who investigated a complaint, hundreds of patients went online for therapy sessions with an unlicensed practitioner who used her wife’s qualifications to pose as a social worker.
State documents show the allegations only came to light after the February death of the woman who posed as a therapist.
Patients believed they were receiving therapy from Peggy Randolph, a licensed social worker in Tennessee and Florida who was hired to conduct sessions with hundreds of clients via video calls from 2021 to 2023, according to a February settlement agreement between Ms. Randolph and the Tennessee Department of Health. After Ms. Randolph’s wife died in early 2023, Brightside Health, an online therapy and psychiatry company based in San Francisco that employed Ms. Randolph, received a complaint suggesting that her wife “was the person providing the treatment,” according to the agreement, which was first reported Tuesday by KFF Health News And CBS News.
The complaint, which was also investigated by Brightside Health, alleged that Ms. Randolph “aided and abetted unlicensed activities and defrauded patients,” according to an investigative report published in March 2023 by the Florida Department of Health.
“The alleged conduct is alleged to be a violation of Randolph’s contractual agreement with Brightside and a breach of its professional code of conduct,” Brightside Health said in a statement. “We are extremely disappointed that a single provider was willing to violate the trust that Brightside and, more importantly, its patients had placed in it.”
Ms. Randolph’s wife, referred to in the agreement only as TR, was “not licensed or trained to provide any form of counseling,” the agreement states. Ms. Randolph was paid for the counseling sessions her wife allegedly conducted.
Ms. Randolph initially denied that TR was seeing her patients, but then admitted that she “may have consulted with some of her patients without her knowledge,” according to the Florida Health Department’s investigation report. But as Brightside Health’s investigation progressed, “it became clear that TR was seeing all of her patients and had been doing so for a long time,” the report said.
Ms. Randolph, Brightside Health, the Tennessee Department of Health and the Florida Department of Health did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
Brightside Health fired Ms. Randolph as part of the investigation, and she voluntarily surrendered her license in Tennessee and Florida, state records show. As part of the settlement, Ms. Randolph was also fined $1,000 by the Tennessee Department of Health.
