Aya Healthcare’s Statement Regarding Notices Sent by AMN Healthcare in Anti-Trust Lawsuit

Most organizations that purchase or provide travel nurse staffing services in the United States recently received a letter from AMN Healthcare or one of its subsidiaries informing them of Aya Healthcare’s request to receive certain information from AMN Healthcare in our antitrust lawsuit against them.

To clarify any confusion, Aya Healthcare business leaders will not have access to any sensitive information that is being requested related to your firm. Any sensitive information can be provided as “attorney’s eyes only,” which will allow the information produced to be seen on a highly confidential basis and available only to our attorneys, experts and court officers for the purposes of assessing AMN business practices in this case.

Aya Healthcare is suing AMN Healthcare in order to restore fair and free competition to the travel nurse staffing industry. We believe that a marketplace free of unlawful, anti-competitive behavior will result in enhanced service, improved pricing dynamics and a better experience for hospital systems and clinicians. Multiple courts have already ruled that AMN is using unlawful contractual restraints and sham litigation as a business practice. On November 1, 2018, the California Court of Appeal affirmed a Superior Court’s decision and injunction preventing AMN from “using, enforcing or attempting to enforce” unlawful contractual restraints in their agreements with employees.

The court found that AMN has engaged in “objectively baseless” lawsuits against former employees and competitors and filed these lawsuits in “bad faith.” These recent court decisions shine a spotlight on the systematic pattern of behavior, including unlawful contractual terms with competing staffing providers, sham litigation and other strong-arm tactics that AMN uses to preserve a dominant market share in the travel nurse industry.

Our legal action aims to restore free competition to the travel nurse industry, which should result in benefits for all market participants. The dominant market providers should be ones who deliver superior service at superior pricing, not ones who restrict competition through unlawful business practices.

Fair competition in our industry will result in lower prices for hospitals, greater opportunities for travel nurse companies and a better experience for travel nurses. We hope that staffing companies in our space will be free to compete on the quality of their service without being stymied by unlawful restraints which prohibit competition and adversely affect all market participants.