District Judge Walter H. Rice of the Southern District of Ohio granted three pretrial motions brought by the Defendants on the eve of trial in The Medical Center at Elizabeth Place, LLC v. Premier Health Partners, et al., Case No. 3:12-cv-26, 2017 WL 3433131 (S.D. Ohio Aug. 9, 2017), and denied as moot eleven remaining pretrial motions. Judge Rice dismissed the entire case with prejudice because he ruled the contracts that Plaintiff, a competitor hospital, challenged should be analyzed under the rule of reason, but Plaintiff had failed to plead a rule of reason case. Plaintiff’s decision not to do so doomed the case to failure.

WHAT HAPPENED:

• Judge Rice’s key decision related to the Defendants’ pretrial challenge of District Judge Black’s (who was previously assigned to the case) order holding that the per se rule applied.

• The Defendants include four hospital systems in the Dayton, Ohio area that formed the Premier joint venture. The hospitals “are owned, controlled and operated independently” but “their income streams are consolidated, and Premier manages many of their business functions, including the negotiation of each hospital’s managed care contracts with insurers.” 2017 WL 3433131, at *13.

• The Plaintiff challenged two types of agreements Premier negotiated on behalf of the hospitals: (1) agreements with insurance companies (payers) that included a “rate-for-volume clause”—that is, a provision wherein payers agreed to give Premier the option to terminate or renegotiate rates should the payers add other hospitals to their network; and (2) non-compete agreements with physicians in which physicians agreed to refer patients internally.

(more…)