Particle Health said Monday that the “vast majority” of its customers are still receiving records from medical software giant Epic Systems, despite an ongoing dispute between the 2 firms over data-sharing practices.
Epic's software supports greater than 300 million patient records, and Particle acts like a middleman to assist healthcare organizations access the info they need. Both firms belong to an interoperability network called Carequality, which enables the exchange of patient information on a big scale.
On March 21, Epic filed a proper dispute with Carequality, citing concerns that Particle and its participating organizations “may be misrepresenting the purpose of their data retrievals.” To join the Carequality network, organizations should be approved to share patient records and cling to “Permitted Purposes,” that are generally related to treatment.
Patient data is protected by a federal law called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which requires patient consent or knowledge for third-party access.
Particle said in a news release Monday that while Epic “randomly stopped responding to data requests from some of its customers” consequently of the dispute, most customers weren’t affected. The company said it has pushed Epic to revive connections to affected customers and that many are already back to normal.
“While there is an ongoing dispute between Epic and Particle Health relating to three specific customers, the vast majority of Particle Health customers affected by Epic’s actions were in no way related to this dispute,” said the corporate the discharge.
In a press release to CNBC on Monday, Epic said it had discovered that some Particle customers had accessed patients' medical records by “falsely claiming to be treating them as patients.” Epic said that after a review, its customers asked the corporate to stop “a small number” of groups from using Particle's Carequality connection to access their data.
“This violates the policies and spirit of Carequality, which was founded to promote interoperability and improve patient care,” Epic said within the statement.
Epic said its customers asked Particle to supply more details about how these organizations use medical records before restoring access.
Particle CEO Jason Prestinario said in his company's press release that the startup will resolve the dispute with Epic through official procedural channels.
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