Claims that the Wolfe Eye Clinic unfairly controls more than 70% of the Central Iowa market for vitreoretinal care will be argued next month before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Wolfe Eye Clinic, also known as Wolfe Clinic, and three of its individual owner-physicians, Dr. Jared Nielsen, Dr. Kyle Alliman, and Dr. David Saggau, were sued last year by a former colleague who accused them of engaging in anticompetitive and exclusionary practices “to ensure Wolfe Clinic maintains a monopoly” in Des Moines, Fort Dodge and Spencer.
According to court records, Wolfe Clinic has 21 locations throughout Iowa and employs more than 400 people.
The lawsuit was filed 14 months ago in U.S. District Court by a surgeon and one-time shareholder of the clinic, Dr. George Par, an ophthalmologist who specializes in vitreoretinal surgery and deals with retinal detachment, diabetic eye disease, macular degeneration and other patient issues.
In the lawsuit, Par claimed that in 2020, he left Wolfe and founded Par Retina, with locations in Des Moines, Spencer and Fort Dodge. He alleged that when he emerged as a potential competitor who might loosen the “Wolfe Clinic’s stranglehold” over vitreoretinal care in Iowa, the clinic schemed to defame him, shut off referrals from other eye doctors, and prevent his patients from seeing him.
To address Par’s concerns, the clinic agreed to mediation with Par in 2020, before the filing of any lawsuits. Through mediation, a settlement was agreed upon, and Par received a “substantial” payment from Wolfe Eye Clinic, according to court records.
Last year, however, Par sued to undo the settlement, claiming he had relied on lies told by Wolfe’s attorneys, and claimed Wolfe was guilty of monopolistic practices.
Although many of the court records in the case are either heavily redacted or filed under seal with the court’s approval, the open portion of the file indicates Par alleged that to protect and enlarge its market share, Wolfe had opened optometry clinics in Iowa communities for the express purpose of referring all of the lucrative surgical work in those areas to its own surgeons – even if the clinics operated at a loss.
Par also claimed that the optometrists employed at each of Wolfe’s vision centers provide a “network of virtually automatic referrals” to Wolfe’s surgeons, and that the optometrists are paid more “so that Wolfe Clinic can obtain referrals” from them.
Wolfe Clinic denied any wrongdoing and noted that with regard to the claims that it was buying up clinics to operate at a loss, Par had cited only two such acquisitions, one in Carroll and one in Creston, each of which is more than an hour’s drive from all three of Par’s locations in Des Moines, Spencer, and Fort Dodge — and were thus unlikely to be siphoning away any of his business.
As for the anti-competitive conduct and anti-trust claims, the clinic argued that Par was alleging nothing more than having been damaged by merit-based competition, which is not the same as alleging that Wolfe was inhibiting competition itself.
In May, a district court judge sided with Wolfe and dismissed Par’s case in its entirety. As to the anti-trust claims, the judge noted that Wolfe’s alleged conduct did not “affect competition in the vitreoretinal care market generally” and that any loss of patients and referral sources that Par suffered was due to competition with Wolfe.
Par, who has since closed his Iowa clinics and moved to Idaho, appealed the decision and the two sides are expected to argue their case before a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis on Jan. 10.
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