DOJ's swift OhioHealth deal warns hospitals on
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- DOJ and the Ohio attorney general announced a proposed antitrust settlement Wednesday requiring nonprofit OhioHealth to stop using contracting practices the agencies say prevented health insurers from selling cheaper policies.
- The settlement comes just four months after the agencies sued the Columbus-based health system — a notably swift timeline for antitrust enforcement.
- Legal experts say the speed and decisiveness of the deal should put other hospitals on notice about their own contracting practices with payers.
- Katie Keith, director of Georgetown University's Center for Health Policy and the Law, said she expects lawyers to get busy reviewing hospital contracts with payers in light of the settlement.
- The proposed deal is likely to push other health systems to examine whether their own contracting arrangements carry similar antitrust exposure.
Why it matters: The four-month gap between lawsuit and proposed settlement is unusually fast for federal antitrust enforcement, signaling the DOJ is willing to move aggressively against hospital contracting practices deemed to restrict insurer competition — meaning hospital counsel nationwide now have a concrete template of conduct to scrub from their payer contracts.
