Medical staff antitrust decisions examine defenses available to defendants

The 1990 decisions reported on below concern defenses established by both legislation and judicial precedent. To the extent defenses preclude the need for a trial on the merits, the saving in time, effort and expense for the defendants can be considerable.     

Hospital mergers and antitrust: an economic analysis

The hospital industry has recently experienced substantial merger activity. This paper examines several actual and proposed hospital mergers to determine the extent of competition in the affected markets and the effect these mergers may have on competition. Our focus is on mergers between hospitals in the same market. We define the relevant product and geographic market for hospitals, then develop criteria for evaluating hospital mergers and analyze several merger cases using these criteria. We conclude that these mergers threaten the competition that exists in most of the markets discussed, and that the claimed efficiency justification for mergers is not convincing.