Stericycle, Inc. Excessive Billing
Stericycle, Inc., a publicly-traded company with revenue swelling 14.1% in 2012 to $1.96 billion, maintains an expansive network of medical waste transport vehicles, collection sites, and treatment facilities in the United States and 11 international markets. Stericycle’s extensive customer base includes hospitals, laboratories, physician practices, dental offices, long-term care facilities, blood banks, veterinarians, and other generators of biohazardous waste.
Following the enactment of the Medical Waste Tracking Act of 1988, Stericycle was formed in 1989. Since becoming a publicly-traded company in 1996, the company has aggressively pursued and acquired competitors and potential competitors, drawing scrutiny of its potentially anticompetitive practices by government entities including the United States Department of Justice and the State of New York in 2011.
At issue is the company’s practice of automatic price increases imposing automatic and unauthorized fees on customers allegedly equating to an 18% price increase every nine months. Evidence, including testimony of a former Stericycle employee in a 2008 whistleblower suit, suggests that the company may have, for years, been illegally masking its intent to impose excessive and unauthorized fees on its customers.