Epic Comes Under Fire for Possible Anticompetitive Practices

It’s common for competitors to question each other’s practices as they fight for every percentage point of market share—less so for potential customers to accuse companies of being “one of the biggest impediments to innovation in healthcare.” That’s what happened recently in the EMR marketplace, though, as Fairview Health Services CEO James Hereford leveled that very charge at Epic, the EMR provider, according to an article in the St. Paul Business Journal. Epic has been accused of being overly protective of data that could be helpful to the broader healthcare system and to providers. One competitor, Cerner, recently protested a $62 million contract Epic secured with the University of Illinois Health system, alleging that Epic worked a process that was rife with conflict of interest. Cerner says it submitted a bid that was $1.5 million lower than Epic’s and that Epic’s bid did not even include all implementation costs. They got the business anyway. The University of Illinois says that’s because proposals were evaluated based on the systems’ technical capabilities first, then cost. Cerner’s protest was rejected by the state.