Carrollton Family Clinic in North Carrollton, Miss., filed a lawsuit against eClinicalWorks, alleging its system failed to meet the requirements of meaningful use, which caused the clinic to forfeit incentive payments in 2014 and lose out on more money in 2017.
However, the company claims the allegations are without merit.
The suit seeks damages and restitution for the plaintiffs — Carrollton Family Clinic and Perrin Curran, MD — who claim eClinicalWorks engaged in fraud and breach of contract. The complaint also lists a class of potential plaintiffs described as those who "actually relied upon [eClinicalWorks'] statements that its software did and would satisfy the certification criteria of the meaningful use program." This means the plaintiffs could include anyone who contracted with eClinicalWorks between Jan.14, 2010 and May 30, 2017 — the day before the vendor agreed to pay the Department of Justice $155 million to settle false claims allegations.
That suit charged the vendor with adding 16 drug codes necessary for meaningful use certification directly into its software rather than providing access from a qualified database. The suit also alleged eClinicalWorks failed to conduct drug-to-drug interaction checks, satisfy data portability criteria, record users' audit logs or complete diagnostic imaging orders.
A separate, similar class-action lawsuit was filed against the company in November, after the administrator of a deceased cancer patient's estate sued eClinicalWorks for alleged gross negligence and breach of fiduciary duty.
In the new suit, Carrollton Family Clinic alleges eClinicalWorks was deceptive in its practices, causing the plaintiffs and proposed class of plaintiffs a loss of money by paying inflated prices for its products. As a result, the clinic renewed its contract with eClinicalWorks instead of switching vendors.
Carrollton Family Practice forfeited $18,000 in meaningful use incentives it already collected after attesting for the reporting period Sept. 1, 2011 through Dec. 26, 2011, according to the complaint. The suit further alleges the vendor caused "plaintiffs and the proposed class to expend out-of-pocket expenses, time and other resources to cure or cope with the many deficiencies in [eClinicalWorks'] software." Those deficiencies include the software's failure to meet meaningful use stage 2 criteria, which requires the system to automatically perform drug formulary checks or preferred drug lists for patients.
"In 2017, [Carrollton Family Clinic] planned to apply for a meaningful use incentive payment based on its use of [eClinicalWorks], but was informed by a representative of the Mississippi Division of Medicaid that [eClinicalWorks] would not enable her to attest to the meaningful use of certified EHR software because [eClinicalWorks] did not perform formulary checks itself and required [Carrollton Family Clinic] to go through a separate process to verify those checks," the suit reads.
The vendor claims the allegations are disputable. "eClinicalWorks' software has been continuously certified for use in connection with the meaningful use program since the program was created, and tens of thousands of eClinicalWorks users have demonstrated meaningful use and successfully attested and received incentives," eClinicalWorks spokesman Bhakti Shah wrote in an email to Becker's Hospital Review.
The EHR vendor added that it plans to "vigorously defend itself against these allegations."