On Tuesday, January 13, Epic and a gaggle of healthcare suppliers—OCHIN, Reid Well being, Trinity Well being, and UMass Memorial Well being—introduced that they’ve filed a lawsuit towards corporations allegedly exploiting confidential affected person data for revenue.
In line with a information launch, the lawsuit claims that Well being Gorilla, a well being info community, allowed Mammoth, RavillaMed, and different corporations to improperly entry and revenue from almost 300,000 affected person medical data belonging to members of the Epic neighborhood. That is along with an unspecified variety of data taken from organizations nationwide, together with the VA and suppliers utilizing different EHRs.
The filing cites misconduct, together with that the defendants:
- “Function as organized syndicates to monetize affected person data with out sufferers’ information or consent.”
- “Request affected person data for the aim of treating sufferers, however take affected person data for different functions, together with to market them to attorneys in search of potential claimants … to affix mass tort or class motion lawsuits.”
- “Obscure their true goal by way of fictitious web sites, shell entities, and sham Nationwide Supplier Identification (NPI) numbers … to create an phantasm of authentic affected person remedy exercise.”
- Cowl their tracks by inserting junk information into affected person medical data “to present the misunderstanding that they’re treating sufferers, which dangers affected person security and wastes beneficial clinician time.”
Moreover, the lawsuit continues, “when caught, quite than stopping their exercise, the unhealthy entity homeowners, operators, and people of their interior circles merely create new corporations. The scheme thus operates like a Hydra: when one fraudulent entity is uncovered, the unhealthy actors start a brand new one, and if not stopped, they are going to proceed to inappropriately market the affected person information they’ve already taken and can take extra.”
Well being Gorilla posted a response on their web site relating to the Epic lawsuit: “We vehemently deny the allegations towards Well being Gorilla by Epic. That is yet one more instance of Epic’s exclusionary actions that restrict competitors and prohibit entry to healthcare information. These actions replicate broader, ongoing considerations raised by others within the business and by authorities actors about monopolistic practices in well being info trade by Epic. Well being Gorilla helps efforts to advertise competitors, affected person selection, and truthful entry to healthcare information.”
