On March 18, 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued updated guidance regarding the use of online tracking technologies by entities and business associates subject to...more
The fiscal year (FY) 2025 budget proposed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) seeks a 20 percent increase from its FY 2024 budget and an additional 55 employees to help support its mission....more
After nearly two years of combined efforts from the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, the agencies jointly issued much-anticipated merger guidelines identifying the procedures...more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)—recently published a...more
From wholesale revisions of the merger guidelines to significant amendments to the Hart-Scott-Rodino premerger notification forms, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have proposed...more
Antitrust concerns about hospital mergers have historically focused on mergers of hospitals that compete for patients in the same local market....more
In two recently issued statements, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reiterated its long-held view that states are not in a position to effectively displace competition with regulatory oversight....more
In a quiet yet shocking announcement on February 3, 2023, the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) withdrew three major antitrust policy statements that have served for years as mainstays of health care...more
On August 15, 2022, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released the FTC Policy Perspectives and Certificates of Public Advantage staff policy paper, along with a fact sheet....more
On January 28, 2022, a federal grand jury in Maine returned an indictment charging four managers of home health care agencies with participating in a conspiracy to suppress the wages and restrict the job mobility of Personal...more
2/10/2022
/ Antitrust Division ,
Antitrust Violations ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Health Care Providers ,
Healthcare Facilities ,
Home Health Care ,
Human Resources Professionals ,
No-Poaching ,
Wage and Hour ,
Wage-Fixing
On June 15, 2021, in a 69–28 vote, the Senate confirmed Lina Khan to fill the current vacancy at the Commissioner level of the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”). Immediately upon her confirmation, President Biden tapped Ms....more
The roll out of the Office of the National Coordinator’s (ONC) 21st Century Cures Act Interoperability and Information Blocking Rules is reminiscent of the way HIPAA has rolled out over the course of the past 25 years. As of...more
Unlawful tying occurs when an entity with market power in one product (the “tying” product) agrees to sell that product but only on the condition that the buyer also agrees to buy a second product (the “tied” product), or at...more
On March 9, 2020, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (“ONC”) and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”) published their long-awaited final rules that seeks to promote...more
On March 17, 2020 the Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) announced that it would “exercise its enforcement discretion and will waive any potential penalties for HIPAA violations” for...more
On January 28, 2020, the Department of Health & Human Services (“HHS”) Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) addressed a federal court’s January 23rd invalidation of certain provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and...more
2/12/2020
/ Covered Entities ,
Data Protection ,
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ,
Document Requests ,
Electronic Medical Records ,
Fees ,
Health Care Providers ,
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ,
HIPAA Omnibus Rule ,
HITECH Act ,
OCR ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
PHI ,
Third-Party Service Provider
On September 16, 2019, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) released their combined Hart-Scott-Rodino Annual Report (“Report”) for fiscal year 2018 (covering the...more
Last September, Makan Delrahim, the Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (“DOJ”), announced efforts to streamline antitrust merger reviews with a stated goal of completing the...more
Violations of the Sherman Act generally require a demonstration of market power in the “relevant market.” The relevant market has two components—the relevant product market and the relevant geographic market....more
The Statements of Antitrust Enforcement Policy in Health Care (“Policy Statements”), issued jointly by the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission, provide, at Statement 3, guidelines for evaluating whether a joint...more
When a physician network or a multiprovider network lacks sufficient integration (either financial or clinical), agreements on price among the competing providers in the network must be avoided. One way to do this is through...more
Health care networks strive to achieve a level of integration that will permit joint contracting without the risk of per se condemnation under the antitrust laws. Clinical integration will allow for such contracting, but...more
Section 8 of the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines (issued jointly by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission) states that “the Agencies consider the possibility that powerful buyers may constrain the...more
Recent decisions outside of the health care industry—including the defeated efforts (at least at the district court level) to block the merger of AT&T and Time Warner and the recent decision from the Second Circuit upholding...more
Often, health care providers want to take advantage of state “provider cooperation” laws—those laws that sanction (and provide “state action immunity” for) conduct that would otherwise raise antitrust concerns. Late last...more