Federal Trade Commission

Below is an excerpt of an article, co-authored with Antitrust and Trade Regulation Team lawyer Jen Driscoll and Internal Investigations and Corporate Compliance chair Ed Heath, published in the American Health Law Association’s Health Law Weekly newsletter on January 19, 2024.

Mergers and acquisitions in health care markets are viewed with heightened scrutiny by

On June 2, 2022, the Federal Trade Commission announced a pair of antitrust enforcement actions to block pending health system transactions that, according to it, would harm competition in the provision of inpatient general acute care hospital services.Continue Reading FTC Takes Action to Block Hospital Transactions in Utah and New Jersey

On March 24, 2020, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a joint statement on COVID-19-related antitrust enforcement highlighting ways “firms, including competitors, can engage in procompetitive collaboration that does not violate the antitrust laws” to protect public health and safety. The DOJ and FTC emphasized their commitment to facilitating antitrust compliance for businesses that are responding to the national emergency. In furtherance of this position, the agencies gave examples of collaborative activities designed to improve health and safety during the COVID-19 pandemic that are unlikely to run afoul of the antitrust laws, absent exceptions. These include:

  • Collaboration on research and development as “efficiency-enhancing integration of economic activity” which is typically procompetitive.
  • Sharing technical know-how – rather than company specific data about prices, wages, outputs, or costs – as necessary to achieve procompetitive benefits of collaboration.
  • The “development of suggested practice parameters – standards for patient management developed to assist providers in clinical decisionmaking” by providers will not be challenged except in extraordinary circumstances.
  • Joint purchasing arrangements among health care providers “designed to increase the efficiency of procurement and reduce transaction costs.”
  • “[P]rivate lobbying addressed to the use of federal emergency authority, including private industry meetings with the federal government to discuss strategies on responding to COVID-19, insofar as those activities comprise mere solicitation of governmental action with respect to the passage and enforcement of laws.”

Continue Reading DOJ and FTC Issue Joint Statement on Antitrust Enforcement and the COVID-19 Pandemic

On January 10, 2020, The Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced new draft vertical merger guidelines for public comment. Once finalized, the draft guidelines will replace the DOJ’s 1984 Non-Horizontal Merger Guidelines and describe how the FTC and the DOJ will analyze and enforce vertical mergers for compliance with the antitrust laws. Vertical mergers combine two or more companies operating at different levels of the same supply chain, e.g., a combination between a hospital and independent physician group, or a health system and a skilled nursing facility. The draft guidelines adopt common concepts from the Horizontal Merger Guidelines, such as the definition of a “market,” the framework for analyzing the sale of a failing business or its assets, and the purchase of partial ownership interests. Notably, and to the disappointment of many within the health care community, the draft guidelines provide little guidance on vertical mergers specific to the health care industry. Additionally, two FTC Commissioners abstained from voting on the draft guidelines and issued statements outlining their concerns that the guidelines are too lenient toward vertical mergers.
Continue Reading DOJ and FTC Announce Draft Vertical Merger Guidelines

On December 13, 2017 a magistrate judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota granted a request of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and North Dakota Attorney General to preliminarily enjoin Sanford Health from completing its proposed acquisition (via its subsidiary Sanford Bismarck) of Mid Dakota Clinic, P.C., a multispecialty physician practice located in and around the cities of Bismarck and Mandan, North Dakota (see our previous analysis of the FTC’s decision to intervene here).
Continue Reading FTC Granted Preliminary Injunction to Block Physician Practice Acquisition