A federal judge is expected to issue a preliminary ruling next week in a case that pits two post-acute technology providers against each other and raises major questions about data safety and interoperability.
Real Time Medical Systems has asked Judge Paula Xinis for an injunction that would ensure PointClickCare keeps skilled nursing patients’ data accessible to outside vendors using the PCC electronic health records platform with patient and nursing home permission.
The smaller analytics firm alleged in a January lawsuit filed in the US District Court for Maryland that PCC has blocked its access to some records by requiring users to figure out unworkable security ciphers, known as CAPTCHAs. Real Time further alleged the information blocking was an intentional strategy that began when PCC began growing its own post-acute analytics capabilities.
Xinis held a two-day hearing on Real Time’s injunction request this week, listening to hours of expert witnesses from both firms. Late Tuesday, she announced she would deliver a ruling via video on July 3.
Law360 on Wednesday reported Xinis “appeared ready” to keep PCC from restricting Real Time’s automated access.
A spokesman for Real Time on Wednesday declined to comment pending the outcome of the hearing, while a PCC spokeswoman told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, as she did earlier this month, that the company does not comment on any pending litigation.
Court documents, however, outline each company’s stance on the access argument, with each essentially telling the court that ruling for the other could risk patient health and safety.
The 21st Century Cures Act requires tech firms to share protected data with the aim of improving patient care across the healthcare continuum, though it makes broad exceptions for security and other concerns. PCC argues it started blocking Real Time’s access because the Maryland-based firm was using automated bots — similar to those trained on health records by unscrupulous or illegitimate users — that risk the security of its entire EHR system.
PCC is the nation’s largest provider of EHR services to post-acute care.
But according to Law360, Xinis repeatedly referenced the law’s access requirements and seemed “unpersuaded by PCC’s argument that the anti-bot safeguards were done solely to protect its system from intruders and performance degradation.”
Real Time executives told the court their staff had been using bots to pull patient data from the PCC platform for nearly 10 years. In an interview with McKnight’s earlier this month, and again in court, Real Time leaders said they ran into trouble only when they beat out PCC for a state contract in Maryland and after PCC acquired an analytics vendor.
“You have a 10-year footprint with this company and no evidence … that they pose a risk,” Law360 quoted Xinis as telling PCC’s legal team. “So how am I putting you at risk?”
