FTC Gets Creative to Help Failing Medical Practice

By Bridgette A. Keller

Earlier this week my colleagues, Bruce Sokler and Farrah Short published an alert detailing the FTC's creative solution to permit a presumptively anticompetitive merger for a financially failing medical practice. The FTC entered into a proposed settlement with two Minnesota health care providers, allowing them to proceed with a planned merger that, according to the agency, combines “the two largest providers of adult primary care, pediatric, and OB/GYN services in the St. Cloud area.” The FTC's willingness to accept the proposed settlement permitting was premised on (1) the fact that one of the medical groups "is a financially failing physician practice" and (2) "concerns regarding disruptions to patient care and possible physician shortages.”

The full alert on the FTC's envelope-pressing consent solution can be found here.

 

 

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    Bridgette A. Keller

    Of Counsel

    Bridgette advises health care providers, ACOs, health plans, PBMs, and laboratories on regulatory, fraud and abuse, and business planning matters, applying her experience in health system administration and ethics in health care to her health law practice.