On Wednesday, December 13, 2017, a federal district court issued an order preliminarily enjoining the merger of North Dakota healthcare providers, Sanford Health, Sanford Bismarck, (together “Sanford”) and Mid Dakota Clinic, P.C. (“MDC”). The order prohibits the merging parties from consummating their transaction until an administrative trial before the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) is complete. The administrative trial was scheduled to begin on November 28, 2017, but has been continued to January 17, 2018. The North Dakota Attorney General had also joined as a plaintiff in the complaint for a preliminary injunction.

The complaint, covered in our previous client alert available here and discussed in greater depth in our colleagues’ article in the Antitrust Health Care Chronicle, alleges that Sanford and MDC are the largest providers of certain healthcare services in the Bismarck-Mandan region. The FTC claims that the merger would harm competition in several services lines and would result in a combined entity possessing a 75% market share for adult primary care physicians, and a 100% market share for general surgery physicians.