Tag: Health Care

The FTC issued an administrative complaint and authorized a federal court action to block Sanford Health's proposed acquisition of Mid Dakota Clinic, alleging that the deal would vioated antitrust law by significantly reducing competition for adult primary care physician services, pediatric services, obstetrics and gynecology services, and general surgery physician services in the greater Bismarck and Mandan metropolitan area. The FTC, jointly with the Office of the Attorney General of North Dakota, filed a complaint in federal district court seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to stop the deal and maintain the status quo pending an administrative trial on the merits. According to the complaint, Sanford and Mid Dakota are each other's closest rivals in the four-county Bismarck-Mandan region of North Dakota, and the merger would create a group of physicians with at least 75 to 85 percent share in the provision of adult primary care physician services, pediatric services, obstetrics and gynecology services. On July 9, 2019, after Sanford abandoned its acquisition of Mid Dakota Clinic, the Commission announced that it voted 5-0 to dismiss the case.

The FTC required healthcare companies Fresenius Medical Care AG & KGaA and NxStage Medical, Inc. to divest all rights and assets related to NxStage’s bloodline tubing set business to B. Braun Medical, Inc. as part of a settlement resolving charges that Fresenius’s proposed $2 billion acquisition of NxStage likely would be anticompetitive. The FTC’s complaint alleges that the proposed merger would harm competition in the U.S. market for bloodline tubing sets that are compatible with hemodialysis machines used in clinics that treat chronic renal failure. Bloodline tubing sets are single-use plastic tube sets used during hemodialysis treatments. Fresenius and NxStage are two of only three significant suppliers of bloodline tubing sets used in open architecture hemodialysis machines in the United States. Fresenius and NxStage together control 82 percent of the market for bloodlines.The settlement requires Fresenius and NxStage to divest to B. Braun all assets and rights to research, develop, manufacture, market, and sell NxStage’s bloodline tubing sets.