On February 17, 2015, the largest health care provider in Massachusetts, the non-profit Partners Healthcare System, Inc. (Partners), dropped its bid to acquire South Shore Hospital based in South Weymouth, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts dropped its antitrust suit that had challenged the acquisition.^[1] Whether state or federal regulators will permit Partners’s proposed acquisition of Hallmark Health Corp. (Hallmark)’s two acute care hospital remains to be seen.

The decision by Partners comes a month after a Judge rejected a consent judgment that Partners and former Attorney General of Massachusetts Martha Coakley proposed regarding Partners’s agreement to acquire three acute care hospitals in the greater Boston area.^[2] Less than a year ago, on June 24, 2014, the Attorney General of Massachusetts had simultaneously filed a complaint and a proposed consent judgment with Partners regarding Partners’s acquisition of South Shore and two hospitals operated by Hallmark.Continue Reading Partners Halt Acquisition of Boston Area Hospital After Court’s Rejection of Consent Judgment