Over the weekend, a federal judge made a major ruling on Particle Health’s antitrust lawsuit against EPIC, allowing key claims to continue while firing others.
Judge Naomi Buchwald of the southern region of New York allowed the particles' three federal antitrusts to continue and demanded tort intervention in commercial contracts.
In September last year, Data Platform Particle filed a lawsuit against EHR behemoth Epic in September last year. The startup's complaint says EHR suppliers are leveraging their market advantages to prevent competition in the payer platform space.
Payer platform space refers to the digital platform market in emerging markets that allow payers to access and analyze patient data for a variety of purposes, including improving care coordination, designing population health plans or simplifying claims processing.
Particle’s complaint said EPIC competes by preventing particle customers from retrieving Epic-Mand-Mand-Mand-Mand-Mand-Mand-Mand-Mand-of Strace.
At the center of the dispute is Carequality, a national data exchange framework where epic plays a leading role in operations. Particles rely on care to retrieve patient records on behalf of their clients, but the startup claims Epic has selectively restricted its access, thus cutting it out of critical clinical data channels.
Partic believes that Epic uses its impact on care to tilt the market and keep competition out — calling this behavior equivalent to an effort of “unprecedented” market forces that can curb innovation and control payer access to patient records. The company claims Epic's strategy prompts clients to abandon contracts and prevents new customer relationships from forming.
Buchwald said in his September 5 ruling that the particles provided reliable information to support its claim that Epic is engaged in anti-competitive behavior, enough to avoid a complete dismissal of the case at this initial stage. However, she did dismiss several claims that Epic engages in conspiracy, slander and trade slander.
Attorney CEO Jason Prestinario said he was “very happy” with Buchwald's ruling in LinkedIn post.
He wrote: “Although some of these claims did not survive, Epic's motion for dismissal was rejected in all three core monopoly antitrust claims. This is the first time in Epic's history that opposes their antitrust cases have reached this point. It is the next step, with a greater victory for better patient care and more patient care,” he wrote.
An epic spokesperson Medcity News Noted that the company is looking forward to the next stage of legal proceedings.
“The court rejected the claim of most particles. The ruling includes concerns' observations on the imposition of the corrective action plan [on Particle] It is completely reasonable. EPIC has worked and will continue to work to protect the privacy of patient data. “We look forward to the opportunity to present evidence to possess the rest of the claims,” the spokesperson wrote.
The next step for the parties is the discovery phase, which may make the data sharing rules enforce and the future dangerous dangers of the payer platform.
Photo: Andrii Sedykh, Getty Images
