SUMMARY OF ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT
ACTIONS
FOR PUBLIC RELEASE
FOR MONDAY, JAN. 04, 1993 THROUGH FRIDAY, JAN. 08, 1993
1/07/93 |
Department
of Justice Issues Business Review Letter
In a letter from J.
Mark Gidley, Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the
Antitrust Division, to counsel for University Hospitals of Cleveland
("UHC"), a teaching hospital affiliated with Case Western Reserve
University School of Medicine ("Case Western"), the Department
announced that it does not intend to challenge, under the antitrust
laws, a proposal by Case Western and UHC to use a single agent
to negotiate contract terms and fees with third-party payers on
behalf of the nineteen separate physician practice groups that
provide medical care at UHC. Safeguards built into the proposal
ensure that it is unlikely to increase the availability of fee
and cost information among competing providers and therefore is
unlikely to facilitate collusion. Moreover, there appears to be
a procompetitive justification for the proposal. Their present
system of each of the nineteen practice groups negotiating and
contracting separately with third-party payers has become burdensome
and unwieldy. Changing the method of negotiation is expected to
lower the costs associated with contracting by expediting negotiations
and facilitating the bargaining process.
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Copies of legal filings are
available from the Legal Procedure Unit, Antitrust Division, Room 3233,
Telephone No.: 514-2481.
93-3
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