Antitrust Alert: Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Corporation Must Divest Highland Park Hospital - Administrative Law Judge Rules for FTC
10/25/2005
The federal antitrust enforcement program against hospital mergers has been notable for the fact that the government lost more than a half dozen merger cases in the courts over the last decade. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has responded to this adverse precedent by embarking on a retrospective analysis of hospital mergers, and targeted one consummated merger as an apparent test case to demonstrate the anticompetitive effects such mergers produce and create new jurisprudence that would reinvigorate the hospital merger enforcement program. Last week, the first major step toward implementing that strategy occurred in a preliminary decision in the consummated merger case.
The attached Alert provides additional detail about the FTC's revisitation of the Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Corporation merger, and the issues which led to the Administrative Law Judge to determine that the merger had lessened competition.
