PointClickCare on Monday asked a federal court to dismiss an 18-month-old civil suit challenging its right to block another post-acute technology firm from freely accessing its data.

Real Time Medical Systems sued PCC in early 2024, arguing that the giant electronic health records firm was using unsolvable puzzles, called CAPTCHAs, to prevent it from pulling data needed to perform analytic tasks for its skilled nursing clients and their patients. The smaller firm argued PCC’s move could potentially kill its business.

PointClickCare first asked the US District Court for Maryland to dismiss the case more than a year ago, arguing that Real Time’s practice of using automated bots threatened the security of its systems and its clients’ information.

But Real Time then pursued an immediate injunction against the information blocking — which was later awarded and remains in place thanks to a Circuit Court ruling — derailing activity before the lower court.

PCC is the by far the leading provider of post-acute electronic health records, based on marketshare. Its renewed motion to dismiss responds to facts of law cited in the injunction proceedings, arguing that infiltration using bots to extract data can “disrupt PointClickCare’s systems, causing slowdowns and even outages for PointClickCare’s paying customers.” 

“Real Time’s case, built on faulty claims and a misinterpretation of the law, should be dismissed entirely,” a PCC spokesperson told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News. “Their goal is clear: to exploit our software with dangerous bots to extract critical healthcare data for free. Real Time’s actions — and this lawsuit — pose a profound risk to our customers, the confidential health information of the patients we serve, and the entire healthcare industry.”

Real Time previously told the court that PCC didn’t begin blocking its access until they became closer competitors, with PCC moving more significantly into the analytics space and Real Time beating the larger company out for a state contract.

On Monday, PCC said Real Time’s anti-competition claim is invalid in Maryland because the analytics firm has acknowledged it has “unclean hands.” PCC attorneys wrote that state law requires the court to rule on behalf of the defendant if the plaintiff takes part in “unlawful or inequitable conduct pertaining to the matter in which relief is sought.” 

PCC argued that Real Time knew service agreements with shared clients prohibit nursing facilities and their partners from accessing PCC’s medical record system by using “any automated or other process such as screen-scraping, by using robots, … or any other sort of bot or tool, for the purpose of extracting data.”

It also reiterates and amends its arguments on each of six counts that Real Time alleged in its initial lawsuit.

PointClickCare is seeking oral arguments in the case, and said it believes further discovery — beyond the limited evidence introduced for the injunction arguments — would show it is justified in “enforcing its contractual provisions with its customers that bar all bots.” 

A spokesman told McKnight’s last week that each of its other 1,900 data partners has followed specific security protocols and paid a “reasonable rate” for access. No others have taken legal action to change the status quo.

The court has given Real Time until July 9 to file a response.

A spokesperson for Real Time did not immediately respond to a request for comment from McKnight’s Monday night.

The case is one of two currently making their way through federal courts that bring into question how courts will interpret the 21st Century Cures Act’s information blocking rule, which provides eight exceptions allowing a company to block data.

Epic, the nation’s largest acute care EHR provider, is being sued by Particle Health, which, like Real Time, uses patient data collected in other platforms to deliver providers actionable insights.  Particle has filed a federal antitrust lawsuit alleging that Epic is preventing competition in the payer platform market and has “inappropriately hindered” the safe and secure exchange of health information.

A spokesman for PCC said last week that the two cases are not closely linked, but it makes sense that more challenges to the 2020 federal interoperability and information blocking rule would appear now that finalized elements have been in play for some time.

“What’s different is that our case is just about bots,” the spokesman said. “It boils down to this: RTME wants to continue using dangerous bots on our system, but we are the custodian of our clients’ data. We’ve got to make sure it’s secure and protect the sanctity of the information.”

Real Time has previously argued that its bots don’t pose a security threat; that it holds the highest level of security certification; and that PCC can tell when and on which clients’ behalf it is accessing data. A Circuit Court panel agreed, finding PCC had submitted “extremely limited and tenuous” evidence about its security concerns or any breaches caused by Real Time’s use of automated tools.

District Court Judge Paula Xinis, who will handle the motion for dismissal, also has previously called PCC’s use of unsolvable CAPTCHAs to block Real Time’s access a violation of the 21st Century Cures Act.