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Antitrust Law and Exclusive Contracts: Obstacles to Patients' Benefits?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Robert E. Nord
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Extract

Antitrust challenges to agreements between hospitals and physicians who provide patient services have become one of the most common types of antitrust litigation in the past few years. Two recent decisions by different circuit courts of appeal highlight the legal and medical principles on which such disputes will be decided.

In August 1982, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction entered in favor of an individual anes-thesiologist who had complained that after an anesthesia group terminated her employment, the hospital wrongfully refused to allow her to continue to serve patients. The Seventh Circuit, in Dos Santos v. Columbus-Cuneo- Cabrini Medical Center, expressed serious doubt whether under antitrust analysis, a single hospital could ever be treated as a distinct market for the purchase and sale of health care services. The court remanded the case to the federal district court, where it is still pending.

Type
Article
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , April 1983 , pp. 64 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1983

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