Dive Brief:
- Central Florida-based health system and payer Health First's attempt to dismiss the lawsuit filed against it by physician group Omni Healthcare—claiming the Brevard County hospital corporation bullied doctors and drove some out of business—failed last week. A federal district judge denied the company's motion, moving the case forward.
- Omni Healthcare originally claimed that Health First had sought to create "a vertically integrated, self-reinforcing, illegally maintained healthcare monopoly in Southern Brevard County." The complaint contended that doctors were coerced into joining Health First's subsidiaries, and those who refused were forced out of business. Omni Healthcare further claimed that since Health First bought up most of the other competing hospitals in the area, a practice dating back to 1985, they had the power and means to apply the pressure, according to the US District Judge Roy B. Dalton, Jr.'s recap of the original complaint.
- The motion also sought a more definite statement and memorandum of law to detail Omni Healthcare's complaint, in lieu of an outright dismissal. Judge Dalton responded to that request by remarking that the original "101-page, 422-paragraph tome" that contained Omni Healthcare's complaint was more than enough information upon which Health First's lawyers could craft a response.
Dive Insight:
This is a pretty common legal strategy early on in the legal process, and Health First probably isn't too surprised by this outcome.
Brevard is no small piece of business, so it's no surprise that Omni Healthcare doesn't want to be driven out of the ring and that Health First wants to maintain dominance. Florida has one of the largest aging populations in the country, and statistically has a greater demand for healthcare than most similarly-sized states. So, even though Brevard is not one of the top five largest counties in Florida, it does have a population of more than 500,000, with 22% of those residents being age 65 or over, according to the US Census Bureau.