Epic Faces FTC Antitrust Inquiry, As State Investigators Probe Data Access And Employment Limits

Epic Systems is under examination by the Federal Trade Commission for potential antitrust violations, according to four people who were recently contacted by investigators. The inquiry is described as broad and still in its early stages, meaning it may never produce charges, but the scope of the questions suggests regulators are looking beyond a single dispute.

Those contacted said investigators asked about two lines of conduct. One concerns Epic agreements that prevent employees from working for a wide range of health care businesses that directly or indirectly compete with the company. The other concerns whether Epic uses its position with hospital customers to block rival technology companies from obtaining patient data and other information needed to support their businesses.

The Conduct Under Review

Epic’s central role in hospital software helps explain why these questions matter. Its electronic health record platform serves as the digital backbone for care delivered to millions of Americans, and the company has expanded from hospital systems into related businesses serving health insurers and other large health care entities. STAT reported that Epic now handles electronic medical records for 57% of inpatient hospital beds in America, while approximately 82% of Americans have at least one record stored by the company.

That scale changes the policy significance of disputes that might otherwise look contractual. If a dominant record platform can decide which third-party products can connect to customer-controlled data, interoperability becomes a competition issue, not just a technical one. Likewise, if employment restrictions keep experienced staff from moving into adjacent health care businesses, regulators may view labor mobility as part of the same market-power story.

Attorneys general in states across the country have also joined calls with interview subjects or reached out to their private lawyers for information, according to the people who spoke with STAT. That multi-level interest suggests the matter is not confined to a narrow federal fact-gathering exercise, even if investigators do not appear close to filing charges.

The Road Here

The regulatory attention follows a series of private lawsuits from rivals and former employees. One of the clearest examples in the source material is a 2025 suit from CureIS Healthcare, which makes software for managed care organizations. CureIS alleges that Epic started blocking its access to data held within customers’ own instances of Epic after deciding CureIS was a “direct competitor” to Epic’s Tapestry product.

According to the complaint summarized by STAT, CureIS said Epic then pressured shared customers not to work with CureIS, citing data security concerns that CureIS says are false. CureIS also described an “Epic-first policy” under which Epic allegedly requires customers to abandon third-party tools and avoid non-Epic options if Epic believes it has an overlapping tool or service, even where the Epic product is still under development.

CureIS pointed to an Epic brochure titled “Products You Can Replace with Epic,” which listed 323 products under 21 categories, with 16 purportedly labeled “under development.” In its motion to dismiss, Epic argued that the case rests on the mistaken idea that Epic is legally required to keep CureIS in business or barred from telling its own customers what features it already offers or expects to offer soon.

Epic’s Position And The Signal For Health IT

Epic did not affirm or deny whether it has been contacted by the FTC or whether it knows of the agency’s interest. In a statement cited by STAT, a company spokesperson said, “We’re leaders in interoperability to support patient care, and we do not engage in anticompetitive behavior,” while pointing to record-sharing and developer-connectivity efforts including more than 1,000 developer connections.

The commercial signal is that interoperability claims are no longer enough on their own when a platform becomes this entrenched. Epic’s annual revenue reached $5.7 billion in 2024, up from $3.3 billion in 2020, and its founder and chief executive Judith Faulkner built the company into a system touching most large hospital networks. At that scale, regulators appear to be testing whether customer dependence, data control, and workforce restrictions together can amount to exclusionary conduct.

Even without near-term charges, a years-long inquiry could pressure Epic’s contracting, data-sharing, and competitive practices. For companies that build tools on top of dominant health record systems, that may be the most immediate implication: the rules governing access to hospital data are increasingly a matter of antitrust scrutiny, not just vendor negotiation.