The antitrust enforcement agencies, in their 1996 Statement of Antitrust Enforcement Policy in Health Care, allow physicians and hospitals to integrate clinically, to diminish any antitrust problems in their network activities. The OIG's expressed concern about gainsharing is its potential to function as an incentive for reduction or limitation of services to patients, even in the context of arrangements that the agency otherwise openly acknowledges could be deemed to be of high quality and beneficial to patients. Instead, let's try to protect the legality of enhancing quality, while efficiently managing costs, through all available and appropriate means. At a time when virtually all health care providers are struggling financially or at least facing more difficult financial challenges then ever it does not behoove society to impose obstacles to clinical innovations that can lead to greater cost efficiency and higher quality in care. Every signal from every purchaser of health care, including the biggest single purchaser the federal government says that this is so.
Most regulatory agencies are in accord as well.
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