Texas Lawyer Common Ken Paxton sued Epic this week, alleging that the corporate is monopolizing the EHR market and limiting sufferers’ entry to their very own medical information.
Epic’s EHR programs are put in in additional than 3,600 hospitals within the U.S., giving the corporate roughly 42% of the acute care hospital EHR market — way over any competitor like Oracle Cerner or Meditech. The Verona, Wisconsin-based firm generated $5.7 billion in income final yr.
The lawsuit not solely claims that Epic makes use of its dominant place to stifle competitors, but in addition that it blocks mother and father’ entry to their kids’s medical information as soon as they attain a sure age.
“We won’t permit woke firms to undermine the sacred rights of oldsters to guard and oversee their children’ medical well-being,” Paxton stated in a assertion. “This lawsuit goals to make sure that Texans can readily acquire entry to those information and profit from the decrease prices and innovation that come from a very aggressive digital well being information market.”
Epic has denied the allegations, calling them misguided.
What’s being alleged?
The criticismfiled Wednesday, argues that Epic leverages its market dominance to forestall hospitals from transferring to competing EHR programs — and that this observe has successfully shut out rival distributors for many years.
“Epic controls who can entry this information, after they can entry it, and the phrases by which they will entry it — regardless of the easy reality that it’s the hospitals’ and sufferers’ information, not Epic’s,” the lawsuit reads.
Primarily, Paxton alleges that Epic unlawfully restricts or delays suppliers’ entry to affected person information after they use non-Epic programs, subsequently hindering the stream of vital medical data and doubtlessly suspending care.
His lawsuit additionally highlights Epic’s use of noncompete agreements, saying that these restrict different corporations’ means to rent prime expertise. As not too long ago as 2019, these agreements prohibited former Epic workers from working for hundreds of healthcare software program corporations throughout their noncompete interval, in response to the criticism.
How does the mum or dad angle match into this?
Paxton sees this lawsuit not solely as a transfer to uphold the free market, but in addition as a continuation of his efforts to guard mother and father’ entry to their kids’s medical information.
In October, his workplace settled with an Austin-based clinic after its affected person document system allegedly locked mother and father out of their kids’s accounts as soon as they turned 12.
Paxton’s workplace is claiming that Epic hides well being information from mother and father as soon as the kid turns 12, saying that this violates Texas’ well being and security code, which grants mother and father full and unrestricted entry to their kids’s medical information.
Epic has responded by saying it doesn’t decide parental entry to kids’s information, as these selections are made by particular person well being programs and suppliers.
How is Epic responding?
Epic will not be admitting to any wrongdoing, an organization spokesperson stated in an e-mail despatched to MedCity Information.
“The motion taken by Texas is flawed and misguided by its failure to know each Epic’s enterprise mannequin and place available in the market and the big contributions our firm has made to our nation’s healthcare system illustrated by merchandise like MyChart — software program that tens of thousands and thousands of People rely upon day by day,” the spokesperson acknowledged.
In addition they famous that Epic facilitates greater than 725 million well being document exchanges every month, which is way more than some other EHR vendor.
Hasn’t one thing like this occurred earlier than?
That is actually not the primary time Epic has been criticized for blocking the free stream of well being information. In reality, the corporate is at the moment embroiled in a yearslong authorized battle with information platform Particle Well being.
Following months of dispute, Particle filed an antitrust lawsuit towards Epic final yr, alleging that the corporate wielded its dominant market stance to make competitors not possible within the payer platform area.
Epic has denied wrongdoing on this case as effectively — however in September, a federal choose superior the lawsuit, marking the primary time antitrust allegations towards the EHR big have gotten this far.
The following step is the invention part, which might shed new mild on how information sharing guidelines are enforced.
Picture: NiroDesign, Getty Photographs
