It’s a real dog-bites-man story:  Ohio’s eighteen hundred-bed Premier Health System came out on top in its three-year court battle with a 26-bed specialty hospital in Dayton.

On Monday the court unsealed its October 20 decision handing Premier summary judgment.  Tiny Medical Center at Elizabeth Park (MCEP) had sued the Premier hospitals, alleging they had engaged in an antitrust conspiracy to keep their physicians from referring patients to specialty hospitals like MCEP and had pressured insurance companies to keep MCEP out of their networks.

The court gave the Premier hospitals summary judgment.  The crux of the decision was that the Premier hospitals are a single entity for antitrust purposes, although they are separate corporations.  The court relied on the 1983 United States Supreme Court decision in Copperweld v. Independence Tube, which holds that if there is sufficient economic integration among technically separate entities, they will be regarded as one for antitrust purposes.  And, of course, it takes two to conspire.