Some of the largest healthcare mergers and acquisitions over the last year were cross-market transactions, a trend that is expected to pick up steam despite the Federal Trade Commission taking a firmer stance on deals that could potentially violate federal antitrust laws, Becker’s reports.
Health systems are expected to continue to identify cross-market mergers with like-minded systems as they aim to generate economies of scale as a tool to fight elevated expense pressures, according to a new report from Fitch Ratings.
“Cross-market” mergers are between health systems that operate in separate geographic areas and do not eliminate competition to attract patients since the systems provide services to distinct patient populations. However, these types of deals can lead to competitive effects when the merging systems have common payer and employer customers and are competing to be in the same payer and employer networks. Read more.
