St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center in Syracuse, N.Y., will face allegations that it breached an anti-solicitation clause brought by American Anesthesiology of Syracuse, PC, an affiliate of North American Partners in Anesthesia, the largest anesthesia provider in North America, Bloomberg Law reported Dec. 3
According to court documents, St. Joseph's informed NAPA in December 2023 that it would not be renewing its contract with the anesthesia provider when the two's agreement expired on July 1, 2024.
During the negotiations that followed, NAPA discussed the possibility of negotiating a buyout, but those efforts were unsuccessful. St. Joseph's instead opted to hire the providers contracted under NAPA, as they would have been "faced with a critical shortfall in anesthesia care" otherwise. Such a shortage, St. Joseph's said, would "seriously harm patients" and would have forced St. Joseph's to "face an impossible financial situation that would not allow it to remain in operation."
In February, St. Joseph's emailed its medical staff stating its intention to offer employment to the contracted anesthesia providers, followed up with offer letters and filed the initial lawsuit on the grounds that NAPA failed to "obtain reasonable grounds" in their contract negotiations.
On March 1, NAPA sent the hospital a cease-and-desist letter demanding that it stop "inducing clinicians to terminate their contracts with NAPA," according to the lawsuit, and St. Joseph's did not rescind the employment offers. As of April 18, at least "some" NAPA clinicians had accepted St. Joseph's employment offers.
NAPA then filed counterclaims that St. Joseph's breached a non-solicitation clause in its contract with the hospital. St. Joseph's moved to dismiss the counterclaims, which were denied Dec. 2. According to the lawsuit, "it is appropriate for the Court to consider whether NAPA has plausibly alleged that there was an enforceable non-solicitation clause."
The judge did, however, dismiss counterclaims from NAPA of tortious interference with a contract and found that those allegations failed to establish sufficient evidence of intentional and wrongful interference with specific contracts.