Over the weekend, a federal choose issued a big ruling in Particle Well being’s antitrust lawsuit in opposition to Epic, permitting key claims to proceed whereas dismissing others.
Decide Naomi Buchwald of the Southern District of New York permitted three of Particle’s federal antitrust claims to maneuver ahead, in addition to a declare of tortious interference with enterprise contracts.
Knowledge platform Particle filed the lawsuit in opposition to EHR behemoth Epic final September following a monthslong dispute. The startup’s criticism alleged that the EHR vendor is utilizing its dominance out there to forestall competitors within the payer platform house.
The payer platform house refers back to the rising marketplace for digital platforms that permit payers to entry and analyze affected person knowledge at scale for quite a lot of functions, together with enhancing care coordination, designing inhabitants well being packages or streamlining claims processing.
Particle’s criticism alleges that Epic is stopping the startup from competing on this house by blocking Particle prospects from retrieving Epic-held knowledge.
On the middle of the dispute is Carequality, a nationwide knowledge trade framework that Epic performs a dominant function in working. Particle depends on Carequality to retrieve affected person information on behalf of its prospects, however the startup alleges that Epic has selectively restricted its entry, due to this fact slicing it off from a vital pipeline of scientific knowledge.
Particle argues that Epic has leveraged its affect over Carequality to tilt the market in its favor and shut out the competitors — saying that this conduct quantities to an “unprecedented” exertion of market energy that suppresses innovation and controls payers’ entry to affected person information. The corporate alleges that Epic’s techniques have pushed prospects to desert their contracts, as properly forestall new buyer relationships from forming.
In her September 5 ruling, Buchwald stated that Particle had supplied credible info to again up its claims that Epic engaged in anticompetitive conduct — sufficient to keep away from the case’s outright dismissal at this preliminary stage. She did, nonetheless, dismiss a number of claims alleging that Epic engaged in conspiracy, defamation and commerce libel.
Particle CEO Jason Prestinario stated he’s “more than happy” about Buchwald’s ruling in a LinkedIn publish.
“Whereas a number of of the claims didn’t survive, Epic’s movement to dismiss was DENIED on all 3 of the core monopolization antitrust claims. That is the primary time in Epic’s historical past that an antitrust case in opposition to them has gotten thus far. It’s the subsequent step to an even bigger victory for higher affected person care and extra affected person management of their medical information,” he wrote.
An Epic spokesperson despatched a press release to MedCity Information noting that the corporate is trying ahead to the subsequent stage of the authorized course of.
“The Courtroom dismissed nearly all of Particle’s claims. The ruling included the commentary that Carequality’s ‘imposition of the corrective motion plan [on Particle] was fully cheap.’ Epic has labored and can proceed to work to guard the privateness of sufferers’ knowledge. We look ahead to the chance to current proof to prevail on the remaining claims,” the spokesperson wrote.
The following step for the events is the invention section, which may shed new gentle on how knowledge sharing guidelines are enforced and what’s at stake for the way forward for payer platforms.
Picture: Andrii Sedykh, Getty Photographs
