The Federal Trade Commission and
Pennsylvania Attorney General have challenged the proposed combination of
The Penn State Hershey Medical Center and
PinnacleHealth System in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, alleging that the combination would create a dominant provider, reduce the number of competing health systems in the area from three to two, and result in a 64 percent share of the market for general acute care inpatient hospital services.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued an administrative complaint challenging the proposed combination of
Advocate Health Care Network (Advocate) and
NorthShore University Health System (NorthShore) in the Chicago area as a violation of both
FTC Act Section 5 and
Clayton Act Section 7. The FTC, joined by the
Illinois Attorney General, also filed a complaint in federal district court in Chicago seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to prevent Advocate and NorthShore from consummating their merger pending completion of the FTC's administrative trial on the merits of the transaction.
WIM It's no secret the
ACA, the
HITECH Act and other reforms encourage consolidation in the healthcare industry. The FTC's aggressive actions send the opposite message.
Engaging Medical Specialists in Improving Health Care Value
WH
Jeffrey O. Greenberg, MD and
Jessica Dudley, MD, in a
12.22.15post in the
Harvard Business Review, report:
Over the past decade, patients, payers, government, and others have increasingly scrutinized the care physicians deliver. Pay-for-performance programs have enabled payers to hold providers accountable for performance on quality measures. Public reporting has made quality and safety data more transparent. More and more providers are now being held accountable for the cost of care in addition to quality.
WIM
The authors state:
It is critical to have physicians intimately involved in these efforts, yet hospitals and health systems struggle to engage them in improving care. Furthermore, much of the focus on health care redesign has been on primary care physicians, despite the fact that specialty care is responsible for the majority of health care spending.
