JESSICA KIM COHEN April 26, 2019
The
Federal Trade Commission is suing Surescripts for allegedly monopolizing
portions of the e-prescription market.
The lawsuit, filed April 17 and unsealed earlier this week,
alleges that Surescripts illegally monopolized two portions of the electronic
prescribing market: routing e-prescriptions to pharmacies and determining
patients' eligibility for prescription coverage. The FTC claimed Surescripts
used exclusionary tactics to deter customers from using platforms from
competitors.
The FTC
is arguing Surescripts' anticompetitive acts led to higher prices and fewer
choices for customers.
Surescripts
requires its "nonloyal" customers, or those who enter into
nonexclusive agreements with the company, to pay a higher price than those who
use Surescripts' routing and eligibility services exclusively, according to the
lawsuit. Surescripts is a "must-have" for many vendors, as it
accounts for more than 95% of the routing and eligibility markets in
e-prescriptions, the FTC said.
"Surescripts's
web of loyalty contracts prevented competitors from attaining the critical mass
necessary to be a viable competitor in either routing or eligibility," the
complaint reads. "Those effectively exclusive contracts foreclosed at
least 70% of each market."
As one
example, the FTC said Surescripts pressured electronic health record provider
Allscripts to enter into an exclusive contract in 2010.
The FTC
alleges that in 2010 Surescripts pursued an exclusive contract with Allscripts.
Under the contract, Allscripts would be required to terminate its routing
connection with a competitor, Emdeon, which it had worked with since 2007,
according to the complaint. Allscripts terminated its relationship with Emdeon
when its contract with the company expired in 2013.
The FTC
said its complaint is part of the agency's ongoing effort to address
anticompetitive tactics in healthcare.
"For
the past decade, Surescripts has used a series of anticompetitive contracts
throughout the e-prescribing industry to eliminate competition and keep out
competitors," Bruce Hoffman, director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition,
said in a statement. "Surescripts's illegal contracts denied
customers and, ultimately, patients, the benefits of competition."
The FTC
is asking the U.S. District Court in Washington to prevent Surescripts from
engaging in similar agreements in the future and to require the company to
provide "monetary relief" to customers.
Surescripts
has traditionally touted its e-prescription network as a tool to bolster
interoperability between physicians and pharmacists. Earlier this month, the
company released its annual "National Progress Report," boasting that its network
helped 1.6 million healthcare professionals process 1.91 billion
e-prescriptions.
"Surescripts
is very disappointed at the allegations made today by the Federal Trade
Commission," Surescripts CEO Tom Skelton said in a statement.
"Surescripts pioneered the use of two-sided networks that enable the safe
and secure exchange of patient health information. Since 2009, Surescripts has
reduced the price of electronic prescribing by 70%."
Skelton
said Surescripts has cooperated with the FTC's investigation and plans to make
"an important change to our e-prescribing business agreements with
pharmacies by removing the loyalty provisions in those contracts."
Correction:
An earlier version of this story misstated how many e-prescriptions Surescripts
routed. This error has been corrected.
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