Process for gaining IHC information OK'd

A legislative task force charged with confronting questions about Intermountain Health Care's dominance in the marketplace struggled but eventually agreed Wednesday on how it can obtain information from IHC and perhaps other health-care organizations.

The 15-member body spent at least two hours debating before approving a process that required submitting written requests that would be examined by legislative staff, who will decide where best to get the requested information.

But the agreement came after House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, said the task force "is somewhat divided philosophically."

The Privately Owned Health Care Organization Task Force was born out of a compromise to end a legislative effort to tax IHC, the state's largest hospital network. Through a "memorandum of understanding," IHC agreed to full cooperation to reach the goals outlined in an amended version of the bill that would have established a 3 percent gross receipts tax.

Over the next two years, tax force will review things such as market penetration and business and financial practices of health care organizations, as well as the tax exempt status of IHC.

On Wednesday, Curtis took issue with the use of the memorandum to require IHC to turn over proprietary, and possibly competitive, information to the task force.

"This memorandum of understanding is being used in a way that clearly was not anticipated," Curtis said, noting he would not have signed the memo on behalf of the House of Representatives had he known how it would be used.

"I don't think the best interests of the state are being served by dragging in a large private company and asking it to provide proprietary information," he said. "I believe that we can accomplish the goals of this task force . . . without going into proprietary information (that is) punitive in its request and volume.

"I just think we need to be fair in how we go about this," Curtis said.

But as far as IHC is concerned, the memorandum of understanding requires the company to provide requested information and includes "no prohibition on asking questions of IHC," said Doug Hammer, IHC vice president and general counsel.

"We will respond to any question that you ask of us, and, again, we are committed to the memorandum of understanding," he said.

Ultimately, the task force passed a motion by Rep. David Clark, R-Santa Clara, that would require members to submit a written request for information from IHC, which would then be evaluated by legislative staff to determine if the information is available through any other sources other than from the company itself. If the information is determined to be proprietary, it will go through another as-yet-undetermined process to classify the data and protect it from unnecessary public dissemination.

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E-mail: awelling@desnews.com