Hancock Regional Hospital, recently named in a lawsuit filed by The Indianapolis Star, is located at 801 N. State St., Greenfield.
Daily Reporter file photo
HANCOCK COUNTY – The Indianapolis Star has filed a lawsuit against Hancock Regional Hospital and several other hospitals, accusing them of improperly withholding financial records.
The Star and one of its investigative reporters, Tony Cook, filed the lawsuit in Marion Superior Court 1. Along with Hancock Regional Hospital, the other defendants are Hendricks Regional Health, Henry Community Health, Johnson Memorial Health, Major Health Partners, Rush Memorial Hospital, Witham Health Services and Riverview Health.
Cook is part of an Indianapolis Star team behind an investigation of the state’s nursing home system. The lawsuit stems from a formal complaint he filed with the Indiana Office of the Public Access Counselor in September 2021 over the eight hospitals’ denial of access to records, accusing them of violating Indiana’s Access to Public Records Act.
“These actions are preventing members of the public – who own these hospitals – from obtaining fundamental information to which they are entitled in a representative government,” Cook wrote in a letter to Luke Britt, Indiana public access counselor.
The hospitals own nursing homes, which qualifies them to get supplemental nursing home payments from Medicaid. The Star seeks records showing how much of those payments have been used on the owned nursing homes and how much have been used for non-nursing home purposes.
According to the Indiana State Department of Health Division of Long Term Care, Hancock Regional Hospital owns several nursing homes across the state, including Greenfield Healthcare Center and Springhurst Health Campus in Greenfield and Majestic Care of McCordsville.
In its response to Cook’s 2021 records request, Hancock Regional Hospital stated the information he seeks is not subject to disclosure because it constitutes protected trade secrets.
Cook’s complaint notes that state law describes a trade secret as including formulas, patterns, compilations, programs, methods, techniques or processes that have intrinsic value. What Hancock Regional Hospital calls a trade secret has none of those qualities, Cook continued.
“It is quite a leap to say the disclosure of the mere amount of supplemental funds being spent on the hospital versus the nursing homes is some kind of ‘secret sauce,’” Cook wrote. “The only value being lost is whatever value one places on secrecy itself. There is no underlying process, product or formula being protected.”
Cook’s complaint also recalls a stance Britt held on the trade secret argument in an opinion he issued on a complaint the Star filed in 2020 after hospitals denied a similar request. In that opinion, Britt wrote he remained unconvinced that the Medicaid information Cook sought from hospitals is proprietary and that it should be disclosable if it is documented. He closed his opinion by encouraging the parties to revisit the requests.
In a letter to Cook in 2021, however, Britt wrote that a confidential review of hospitals’ materials led him to yield to the trade secret argument.
“The hospitals’ positions are consistent with this statute and this office would be limited to state otherwise, even as compelling as your public policy arguments may be,” Britt told Cook. Britt added that in his opinion, the hospitals named in the complaint did not violate the state’s Access to Public Records Act.
Hancock Regional Hospital declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing the ongoing nature of the litigation.
