Hospital bed maker Linet has accused Hillrom of impeding competition in the U.S. market.

In an antitrust lawsuit filed Tuesday in Chicago, the company said Hillrom has a “stranglehold” on the hospital bed market and has “coerced” large healthcare systems into long-term agreements that bundle multiple product contracts and cut into Linet’s ability to expand in the market through Group Purchasing Organizations, reported Modern Healthcare.

Referring to Hillrom as a “serial abuser of antitrust laws,” Linet alleges that the company took advantage of growing consolidation among hospital systems by offering multiyear, exclusive deals that would encourage integrated delivery networks to purchase multiple Hillrom products together. This was because IDNs often have in-house supply chain functions that control what products their networks of hospitals use, and as a result, Linet says it was unable to compete through GPOs.

Additionally, Hillrom equipped hospitals with its nurse call system, which cannot connect with non-Hillrom beds. "Hillrom's IDN-focused strategy would ensure that the prey had already been caught and tied up by the time Linet could even use its newly won licenses [with GPOs] to start hunting," read the 104-page complaint.

The suit lists a number of hospitals that engaged in these agreements, which were called “Corporate Enterprise Agreements”. Among them were Providence Health, Cleveland Clinic and Universal Health, according to the Chicago Tribune. It says that up to at least 70% of standard, intensive care and birthing beds installed in U.S. hospitals were designed by Hillrom.

Baxter International acquired the bed maker for $10.5 billion in December and plans to expand Hillrom products internationally and move more into physician offices, ambulatory care centers and patient homes. While not named as a defendant in the suit, Baxter’s takeover of the company is alleged to have enhanced Hillrom’s “ability to steamroll” competitors.

“This deal will further lessen competition in the hospital bed market and exacerbate the anti-competitive effects of Hillrom’s existing conduct by creating a ‘super-bundler’ that would hold enormous power over hospitals across multiple product lines, including the full suite of technologically-integrated products that comprise the ‘smart’ hospital room of the future,” alleges Linet in its suit.

It adds that Hillrom has “extinguish(ed) any meaningful challenge to its dominance” and “the severe consequences of that market reality are now reverberating throughout our public health system.” As a result, healthcare costs are at risk of rising and innovation may be halted, with healthcare providers facing a limited supply of hospital beds during a pandemic.

Hillrom and its parent companies have settled a number of antitrust suits against it in the past. In 2006, the company settled with Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System for $337.5 million and agreed to a voluntary injunction that prevented it from using its monopoly power for the sale of standard hospital beds in the renting of certain patient handling equipment for three years. The agreement forced Hill-Rom to unbundle and separately price and discount each product.

In 2015, Universal Hospital Services brought an antitrust suit against the company for engaging in a pattern of “exclusionary and predatory conduct” in order to “foreclose [market] competition" in the medical equipment rental industry. It claimed that Hill-Rom tried to use its position in the standard hospital bed market to negotiate sole-source, "ironclad" agreements with national GPOs and hospital networks that bunded together the use of its equipment for rentals in exchange for steep discounts and rebates.

Linet is seeking damages and an order finding Hillrom violated antitrust law, specifically the Sherman Act, which prohibits monopolization and contracts that restrain trade. It also is asking for an order to bar Hillrom from entering or enforcing corporate enterprise agreements; another that would require Hillrom to give up profits made from "illegal” conduct; and for Hillrom to stop preventing other beds from connecting to all features of its nurse call system, as long as the other beds can do so securely.

Hillrom and Baxter did not respond to Modern Healthcare’s requests for comment.

An attorney for Linet, Julie Porter, declined to comment on the lawsuit to the Chicago Tribune.