It has been nearly a year since the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division (DOJ) made good on its promise to criminally charge companies that agree not to solicit each other's.
In this Issue:
United States
1. FTC abandons challenge to Philadelphia hospital merger.
On March 1, 2021, the FTC, suffering its first loss in a hospital merger challenge since 2016, voted 4-0 to end its effort to stop the proposed $599 million merger of Philadelphia-area health care systems Jefferson Health and Albert Einstein Healthcare Network. The FTC’s decision comes about a month and a half after the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office dropped out of the joint challenge.
The FTC challenged the merger on the basis that it would hurt competition in the Philadelphia-area health care market, and after a defeat at the district court, told the appellate court that the judge had applied “faulty economic reasoning.” The FTC alleged that a combined network would control over 60% of the market for inpatient general acute care services in and around North Philadelphia and at least 45% of the market for those services in and around Montgomery County. The FTC alleged that t
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The Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) Antitrust Division has brought its third criminal antitrust case involving labor markets this time against a healthcare staffing company and its former manager for allegedly agreeing not to solicit or hire its competitor’s contract nurses and to fix wages for those nurses. The case comes on the heels of the Antitrust Division’s first-ever criminal case involving “no-poach” conduct brought in January 2021, where it charged Surgical Care Affiliates, LLC (“SCA”) for allegedly agreeing with a competitor not to solicit one another’s senior-level employees. Another indictment focused on wage-fixing conduct was announced in December 2020. The Antitrust Division now has three active criminal cases involving agreements to restrict competition in health-care related labor markets. Similar investigations in other industries are believed to be pending. Companies should take not
Thursday, April 8, 2021
Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
On March 1, 2021, the FTC, suffering its first loss in a hospital merger challenge since 2016, voted 4-0 to end its effort to stop the proposed $599 million merger of Philadelphia-area health care systems Jefferson Health and Albert Einstein Healthcare Network. The FTC’s decision comes about a month and a half after the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office dropped out of the joint challenge.
The FTC challenged the merger on the basis that it would hurt competition in the Philadelphia-area health care market, and after a defeat at the district court, told the appellate court that the judge had applied “faulty economic reasoning.” The FTC alleged that a combined network would control over 60% of the market for inpatient general acute care services in and around North Philadelphia and at least 45% of the market for those services in and around Montgomery County. The FTC alleged that the defendants also control
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The Department of Justice ( DOJ ) announced yesterday
a criminal indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Las
Vegas, Nevada charging a health care staffing company and its
former manager of entering into and engaging in a conspiracy with a
competitor to allocate and fix the wages of employee nurses in
violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act (15 U.S.C. § 1).
According to the one-count felony indictment filed in the District of
Nevada, VDA OC LLC (formerly Advantage On Call LLC)
( Advantage ) and Company A, both health care