The lawsuit Epic filed against Health Gorilla in January is on track to join a newly centralized multidistrict litigation over the data-sharing company’s alleged misuse of patient records.
Health Gorilla is a Coral Gables, Fla.-based company that connects healthcare organizations and other entities to Carequality and the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, or TEFCA, the national frameworks that allow the electronic exchange of patient medical records among providers and other authorized parties.
According to an Aug. 7 transfer order from the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, viewed by Becker’s, the panel centralized nine separate class-action lawsuits against Health Gorilla, filed across the Central District of California, the Southern District of Florida and the Eastern District of Michigan, into a single multidistrict litigation in the Southern District of Florida, assigning the cases to Judge K. Michael Moore.
Epic’s Jan. 13 lawsuit was not part of the motion to centralize and is not among the nine actions formally transferred under the order. But the panel said it intends to bring the case into the multidistrict litigation through a separate conditional transfer order process, noting that the lawsuit “led to the filing of all actions” now being consolidated.
Epic sued Health Gorilla and several of its customers in the Central District of California, joined by OCHIN, Richmond, Ind.-based Reid Health, Livonia, Mich.-based Trinity Health and Worcester, Mass.-based UMass Memorial Health. The lawsuit alleges the companies fraudulently accessed and monetized patient records obtained through the Carequality and TEFCA interoperability frameworks, bringing claims for fraud, breach of contract and violation of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Health Gorilla has denied wrongdoing and moved to dismiss Epic’s lawsuit in February, calling it “an attack on interoperability.”
Plaintiffs in the Hughes and Lott actions, both pending in the Southern District of Florida, opposed centralization, arguing the cases involve too many different defendants and factual scenarios to justify combining them. The panel disagreed, finding that Health Gorilla’s alleged conduct in vetting and onboarding customers to the frameworks is the common thread running through all the cases.
Under panel rules, parties will have an opportunity to object once the conditional transfer order bringing Epic’s case into the multidistrict litigation is issued.
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