While the Federal Trade Commission has challenged some mergers and acquisitions of health care systems, it has more work to do — such as stepping up investigations of largely ignored “cross-market mergers,” which may constitute antitrust violations, says Harvard Business School Professor Leemore Dafny and colleagues in a study.
These mergers, involving hospitals more than 30 minutes apart, have been relatively free of FTC scrutiny, a study about “cross-market mergers,” says in an article I wrote for the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst
“There is a whole set of potentially problematic mergers that flies under the radar,” Dafny says. “Cross-market is a different frontier, and it is time to turn attention to it.”
Since its publication in March, the Dafny study “has made waves within antitrust circles,”the NEJM Catalyst report says.
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