For the first time in history, Epic will have to face antitrust claims in court after it failed to dismiss Particle Health’s allegations that the EHR giant has been wielding its monopoly power to stifle competition.
Here’s the overly-simplified version. Particle combines health data from 270M+ patients’ medical records by aggregating “thousands of sources”… sources like Carequality.
- Carequality is effectively one of the largest health information networks, facilitating data exchange between network members (like Particle) who agree to only query patient data for “Permitted Purposes” such as Treatment, Health Operations, or Public Health Activities.
- The problem at the heart of the lawsuit arises due to the fact that Treatment is the only purpose that organizations like Epic are actually required to respond to, causing all sorts of companies to warp their true purposes to Treatment-shaped requests.
Particle vs. Epic. Particle’s case alleges that Epic used its EHR monopoly to hamstring competition in the market for “payor platforms,” which allow payors to retrieve patient data to make decisions about care and coverage.
- Last spring, Epic said that Particle was allowing its customers to inappropriately label their Carequality data requests as Treatment, then proceeded to stop responding to EHR requests from 34 Particle customers.
- Particle’s lawsuit alleged that Epic trumped up the Carequality accusations in order to block it from serving its payor platform customers.
Epic filed to dismiss all nine of Particle’s claims. On Friday, the judge sided with Epic on five of the nine claims, dismissing the allegations that Epic maintained a conspiracy to uphold its market dominance, as well as claims of defamation and trade libel.
- However, the court declined to throw out all three of Particle’s federal monopolization claims, as well as a state claim that Epic had interfered with a business contract.
- Those claims will move forward into discovery, and Epic will now have to turn over documents that can shed light on whether its practices withstand legal scrutiny.
The Takeaway
Get the popcorn ready. Epic’s motion to dismiss was only partially successful, meaning it will now have to actually admit, deny, or qualify Particle’s remaining allegations. That deadline is quickly approaching on September 16th – then the real legal fireworks can get started.
