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\t\t<\/p>\nThe Federal Trade Commission is examining Epic Systems Corp., the nation\u2019s largest vendor of electronic health records, for potential violations of antitrust law as part of a broad inquiry into the company\u2019s business practices, according to four people who were recently contacted by investigators.<\/p>\n
The probe is in its early stages and may never lead to charges against Epic, whose dominant market position and control of Americans\u2019 health data has rapidly accelerated in recent years. But the people contacted by investigators \u2014 who work in or advise health care businesses that interface with Epic \u2014 said they were asked about a wide range of issues relating to company policies and practices that have generated continual complaints and lawsuits from former employees and rival companies.<\/p>\n
One of the people said the government appears to be pursuing two separate lines of inquiry. One is focused on Epic\u2019s agreements that bar its employees from working for a wide swath of health care businesses that directly, or indirectly, compete with the company. Another set of questions focused on Epic\u2019s use of its dominant market position, and leverage over its hospital customers, to block rival technology companies from getting access to patient data and information needed to support their businesses.<\/p>\n
Epic\u2019s main product is electronic health record software that chronicles patients\u2019 medical histories and forms the digital backbone of medical services delivered to millions of Americans. Its clients are the largest and most influential hospitals in the country. In recent years, the Wisconsin-based company has also branched into related businesses serving health insurers and other large health care entities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The FTC is not alone in pursuing the inquiry. Attorneys general in states across the country have also joined calls with interview subjects or reached out to their private lawyers to ask for information, according to all three people who spoke with STAT.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\t\tIs there an exodus underway at Epic?<\/a><\/p>\n Federal investigators do not appear close to filing charges and may examine Epic for several years without doing so. The people contacted said the intensity of interest, and the number of entities involved in the inquiry, has been ramping up in recent months.<\/p>\n In an emailed statement, Epic did not affirm or deny whether it had been contacted by the FTC or was aware of the agency\u2019s interest. \u201cWe\u2019re leaders in interoperability to support patient care, and we do not engage in anticompetitive behavior,\u201d a company spokesperson said, listing its data-sharing accomplishments, such as being the first EHR enterprise to connect to the national record-sharing network, its newly announced standards for exchanging diagnostic images<\/a>, and its 1,000-plus developer connections.<\/p>\n The FTC told STAT it had no comment.<\/p>\n Epic started in a basement in Madison, Wis., in 1979. The company\u2019s founder and chief executive, Judith Faulkner, scraped together $70,000<\/a> from friends, family, and acquaintances to buy a hulking-by-today\u2019s-standards \u201cminicomputer\u201d and founded the health IT empire that today handles the electronic medical records for 57% of inpatient hospital beds in America. Approximately 82% of Americans have at least one record stored by Epic, whose annual revenue was $5.7 billion in 2024, up from $3.3 billion in 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n The increasing interest of federal investigators in the company follows the filing of several private lawsuits against Epic by rival business and former employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n A 2025 lawsuit from CureIS Healthcare<\/a>, a company that makes software for managed care organizations, alleges that Epic began blocking its access to data held within customers\u2019 own instances of Epic, part of a playbook it says the company uses to undercut third-party software vendors.\u00a0<\/p>\n CureIS\u2019 programs need data from Epic\u2019s EHR to perform services for its health system clients. At a certain point, Epic decided that CureIS was a \u201cdirect competitor\u201d with its Tapestry product, says the company in the complaint, and began denying CureIS access to customers\u2019 own information \u2014 for example, that of Advocate Health. Epic subsequently pressured the companies\u2019 shared customers to not work with CureIS, saying that it \u201cwasn\u2019t comfortable\u201d with CureIS accessing its systems for data security reasons, which CureIS asserts is false.\u00a0<\/p>\n The company also instituted an \u201cEpic-first policy\u201d under which it requires its customers \u201cto abandon any preexisting third-party tools and forgo exploring non-Epic solutions at any point in the future if Epic believes it has a tool or service that overlaps with the third party\u2019s option,\u201d wrote CureIS in its complaint \u2014 a policy that applies even if Epic doesn\u2019t currently have an active product that does what the third parties do. To underscore the breadth of Epic\u2019s ambitions, CureIS points to an Epic brochure entitled \u201cProducts You Can Replace with Epic,\u201d which outlines 323 products under 21 categories, 16 of which were purportedly labeled<\/a> \u201cunder development\u201d and thus not yet available.\u00a0<\/p>\n Epic declined to comment on the private lawsuits facing it. In its motion to dismiss the CureIS suit<\/a>, the company said that the case is \u201cbased on the misguided notions that Epic is obligated as a matter of law to keep CureIS in business and that Epic is somehow prohibited from communicating with its own customers about what features it already offers, or what future innovations it will soon offer.\u201d<\/p>\n The company blames Epic\u2019s interference for the loss of at least seven customers, including California-based Sutter Health. It also says it lost a nine-figure acquisition deal with a \u201cmajor private equity firm\u201d when the firm found out that the reason CureIS lost a customer was because it was in \u201cEpic\u2019s development crosshairs.\u201d<\/p>\n A related argument underlies the Particle Health antitrust suit against Epic<\/a>, in which Particle says that Epic used a pretext \u2014 in which Particle customers inappropriately accessed medical records<\/a> held by Epic \u2014 to cut off its customers\u2019 access to patient records, coerced customers to move their business from Particle to other companies, and publicly destabilized Particle\u2019s business to the point where the company lost at least 10 customers.<\/p>\n Epic has called the Particle suit<\/a> \u201cnothing more than a baseless retributive attack\u201d because Epic\u2019s actions revealed inappropriate behavior from Particle customers. Some claims in that lawsuit have already been dismissed<\/a>.<\/p>\n Epic is also facing labor lawsuits regarding its unusually restrictive non-competes and stock purchase agreements. Earlier this year, clinical trial management software company Veeva Systems sued Epic in Wisconsin court<\/a> over its restrictive non-compete and stock purchase agreements. Veeva\u2019s Madison office had hired Epic employees in the past and was trying to hire other Epic employees, it said in the complaint, but recently became stymied by candidates being too scared to lose their Epic stock by taking a job at Veeva. The company contended that it does not compete with Epic and that its 2025 addition to Epic\u2019s non-compete list was retaliatory.<\/p>\n \t\t\t \t\t\t\t The case was dismissed because Veeva did not have legal standing \u2014 the company was not party to the contract between Epic and its employees. The company is appealing that judgment.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, another labor case filed by a former Epic employee, Andrea Hull, is still pending in California. Hull, who now works for the medical device company Abbott, contends that Epic has sought to block her from performing her duties for Abbott<\/a> by denying her access to Epic\u2019s UserWeb under Epic\u2019s non-compete, which should be void in the state of California. Epic declined to comment on the lawsuit.<\/p>\n As it faces down those lawsuits, several of Epic\u2019s top technology leaders have left the company in recent months, citing a variety of reasons. Sumit Rana, who was long rumored to be Faulkner\u2019s heir apparent, in early July said he was leaving the company for personal reasons. Seth Hain, a longtime AI leader at Epic, followed soon after, remaining publicly silent about the reason for his departure. Friday was Rana\u2019s and Hain\u2019s last day at Epic.<\/p>\n Several other longtime executives have also recently left the company. Those departures may be entirely unrelated to the investigations circling the company. But current and former employees are being named in the private lawsuits and may also be getting inquiries from government investigators.<\/p>\n The people interviewed by the FTC said the probe appears to be expansive and has not yet narrowed in on specific allegations. The agency in recent years has launched an array of investigations into anticompetitive behaviors by some of the nation\u2019s largest technology companies, including Amazon<\/a> and Meta<\/a>.<\/p>\n Epic, a privately held company, is small in comparison to those businesses. But in\u00a0health care, its presence has become unavoidable, especially amid a rapid rise in the number of companies using artificial intelligence to deliver services to patients and hospitals. Many of those companies, by necessity, must rely heavily on getting access to patient data held within Epic\u2019s software ecosystem to run their businesses.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Epic-Learning-Center-768x432.jpg\")
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\n\t\t\t\tSTAT Plus: Epic must face claims it used monopoly power to harm a rival business, judge rules<\/a><\/p>\n