Judge allows part of lawsuit to continue
Defendant’s motion to dismiss was denied, as was the plaintiff ’s claim of anticompetitive practice
Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center has won a portion of the opening round in its antitrust suit accusing crosstown competitor Hartford Healthcare and its affiliates of monopolizing health care across much of the state through heavy-handed acquisitions and other anti-competitive business practices.
U.S. District Judge Sarala V. Nagala left most of the suit intact in denying a motion by Hartford Healthcare to dismiss it, concluding that Saint Francis has legal standing to bring a private antitrust action and has presented a “plausible” case for violations of federal and state antitrust laws.
She ruled for Hartford Healthcare in two of the suit’s contentions, one of which was a Saint Francis claim that Hartford Healthcare used anticompetitive practice by refusing to participate in tiered group medical insurance plans that provide beneficiaries with an incentive to seek cost savings.
A spokeswoman for Harford Healthcare said, “We are pleased that the Court dismissed one of the two core legal theories put forth by St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center, one of almost 90 hospitals across the nation run by Michigan-based Trinity Health. We continue to maintain that this lawsuit has no merit and distorts the many ways in which Hartford Healthcare serves our communities. We will defend ourselves against these baseless allegations while we remain focused on providing the highest quality care to the patients and communities that we have the privilege of serving.”
A spokeswoman for Saint Francis said, “Due to ongoing litigation, we are unable to comment.”
Saint Francis contends in the
year old suit with wide implications for the delivery of health serves in Connecticut that Hartford Healthcare has driven up costs and captured 60 to 80 percent of the specialty care market in part through “a campaign of exclusion, acquisition and intimidation” designed in the words of its executives to “bury” the competition.
Beginning in 2016, the suit contends, Hartford Healthcare began suppressing competition in order to dominate the market.
It claims Hartford Healthcare was anticompetitive — and at times threatening — in the way it acquired medical practices, controlled referrals by its physicians and negotiated exclusive rights to new technology, such as robotics, in order to keep them out of the hands of other health care organizations.
As a result, the suit said, central Connecticut patients have been forced into crowded, more expensive and in some cases inferior medical care.
In its unsuccessful effort to dismiss the suit, Hartford Healthcare argued that it expanded and hired physicians because it out-competed St. Francis in the normal course of business.
It said that Saint Francis lacks the legal standing to bring an antirust suit because the injuries it claims to have suffered are due to a loss of business to a competitor rather than a reduction in competition.
In a long decision that focused on the complexities of anti-trust law, Nagala concluded that the allegations Saint Francis has so far produced about monopolistic business practices are enough to allow the suit to continue. In the decision, she reproduces portions of a suit that portray business practices not normally associated with health care.
Saint Francis asserts that Hartford Healthcare has expanded medical staff, grown market share and added profitable medical practices to its network through a “campaign of intimidation.”
The suit alleges that executives in the Hartford system have repeatedly threatened — in business meetings — to “crush” doctors who resist affiliating with them. In one case, according to the suit, the system threatened to “recruit a physician to compete specifically against” a doctor who resisted joining.
It alleges that an orthopedist who wanted to transfer robotic surgery cases from the Harford system to Saint Francis was told by two Hartford Healthcare executives that they would “destroy him professionally.”
In another instance, the suit alleges that Hartford Healthcare threatened to deny specialists who resisted affiliation referrals from its primary care network.
Executives ordered doctors in the system to minimize ‘leakage’ of referrals to outside care networks without regard to the cost or quality of care, according to the suit.