Health Data Network Health Gorilla filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed earlier this year by Epic and several health systems alleging improper access to patient records.
The movementfiled last Thursday, called Epic’s lawsuit an “attack on interoperability.”
The dispute reflects unresolved ambiguities over how data interoperability should be governed in the healthcare sector. Experts think the lawsuit is less about stopping a bad actor and more about setting standardized rules and boundaries around the exchange of health data.
Epic’s complaintfiled Jan. 13, claims Health Gorilla allowed other companies to improperly access and monetize nearly 300,000 patient medical records. Health Gorilla has denied the allegations.
The plaintiffs are Epic, Trinity Health, UMass Memorial Health, Reid Health And OCHIN. They allege that Health Gorilla and a network of other companies created fictitious health care providers, fictitious websites, and fake provider identifiers to make it appear that records requests were for genuine treatment purposes. Instead, the data was allegedly misused for non-therapeutic purposes, such as marketing to lawyers seeking potential plaintiffs for lawsuits.
The other companies involved in the network are a group of small telehealth, data and display companies – many allegedly linked to the same founders and operators – which the plaintiffs say were used to pose as legitimate providers.
The complaint also stated that the defendants inserted “junk” information into the records to hide their activity and give the appearance of genuine care, thereby endangering patient safety and wasting clinicians’ time. When a fraudulent entity was revealed, the same actors would create new companies to continue the same behavior, operating “like a hydra,” according to the lawsuit.
In its motion to dismiss the case, Health Gorilla argued that the dispute should be handled through the networks’ integrated governance and dispute resolution processes rather than through federal litigation.
The company also said it has cooperated with months-long investigations into the matter and maintains that Epic’s lawsuit threatens the stability of national data-sharing systems used by providers.
“Epic is trying to portray itself as a good actor because it has been the subject of sustained criticism and investigation by regulators and private plaintiffs for its widespread unfair business practices, and it desperately needs to be distracted from its primary goals, which are to continue to enrich itself at the expense of patients nationwide. The case should be dismissed,” Health Gorilla’s motion states.
The Health Gorilla lawsuit is the latest in a series of litigation for Epic, which is also engaged in a high-profile battle with the data platform. Particle health.
In September 2024, Particle Health continued Epic claims the EHR vendor is using its market dominance to prevent competition in the payment platform space. The complaint claims that Epic imposed technical and contractual barriers that limited access to patient data, which effectively prevented its competitors from creating competing platforms aimed at payers. Last September, a federal judge advance the antitrust lawsuit.
Epic is fighting vigorously in both lawsuits.
“Medical records are deeply personal and their exploitation is wrong. In its motion, Health Gorilla asserts that they should be dismissed as defendants in the lawsuit because they had ‘lack of actual knowledge’ of wrongdoing. This is not an acceptable reason – Health Gorilla had a responsibility to protect sensitive patient data and to know why it was taken,” an Epic spokesperson said in a statement sent to MedCité News.
The EHR giant added that the public deserves a full investigation and resolution in federal court rather than behind closed doors.
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