Antitrust and Competition Litigation in Healthcare

Cornerstone Research and affiliated experts have been involved in high-stakes antitrust matters involving healthcare providers, including allegations of anticompetitive tying, bundling, exclusive dealing, and horizontal price fixing by hospitals or physician networks. Our consultants apply economic theory and advanced econometric techniques to assess alleged vertical restraints, market foreclosure, refusals to deal, and the competitive effects of provider contracts. We have analyzed class certification, liability, and damages issues in landmark provider litigations.

We provide comprehensive economic and statistical analysis in antitrust matters involving labor markets, such as allegations of wage-fixing, no-poach agreements, or anticompetitive non-compete agreements. Our experts assess claims of suppressed competition for nurses, physicians, and other healthcare professionals. We evaluate labor market definition, monopsony power, and the empirical facts surrounding worker compensation and mobility to determine competitive effects. We also evaluate class certification issues in these matters.

In supporting healthcare quality experts, we assess how contracting practices, provider consolidation, and market incentives influence healthcare quality, evaluating procompetitive efficiencies in regulatory and litigation contexts. Our teams apply rigorous empirical techniques to analyze complex quality metrics, clinical outcome datasets, and patient satisfaction data.

We have experience with large antitrust matters related to algorithmic pricing and alleged collusion, claims that are increasingly common in healthcare. Our consultants analyze sophisticated algorithmic pricing models and data-use practices to demonstrate how human inputs can impact and override algorithmic defaults. Utilizing descriptive statistics, event studies, and counterfactual simulations, we evaluate whether wide variations in algorithm inputs and configurations undermine claims of a common pricing methodology, directly addressing key liability and class certification challenges.

Healthcare antitrust litigation involves massive, highly sensitive datasets, including enrollment records, healthcare claims, and discharge records. We have extensive experience in large-scale data management. We utilize secure infrastructure to process billions of records. Our teams are adept at cleaning, structuring, and linking disparate healthcare datasets to create a reliable foundation for empirical analysis.

We deliver comprehensive litigation support at every litigation phase. From discovery and expert retainment to expert reports, depositions, and trial, our consultants ensure seamless support. We combine deep industry knowledge with rigorous research to translate complex economic analyses into clear, compelling, and defensible evidence for the courtroom.

We leverage industry-leading data analytics capabilities and manage vast, complex datasets containing hundreds of billions of records. With support from specialized professionals in the firm’s Applied Research Center, our consultants combine deep healthcare data expertise with a rigorous approach to empirical economic research to address complex economic questions and uncover important metrics of healthcare competition.

In collaboration with our Data Science Center, we also leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to manage and analyze massive, disparate datasets and opposing experts’ production. Our commitment to state-of-the-art technology and continuous investment in data science enables our experts to leverage significant analytical power to rapidly operationalize complex economic analyses.