Retrospective Analysis of Hospital Mergers

Retrospective analyses of hospital mergers may be uniquely valuable because they speak directly to two important issues - the methods used for delineating relevant geographic markets in hospital merger analysis, and the implications of not-for-profit status on post-merger hospital pricing - that have been systematically misunderstood by the courts and other policy analysts, and which likely have led to systematically biased judicial decisions. By identifying these systematic analytical errors and their implications for judicial decision making, retrospective studies of consummated hospital mergers have the capacity to greatly improve the quality of future antitrust policy making.