US: Radiology board beats antitrust suit

The American Board of Radiology didn’t violate antitrust laws by tying together its physician certification and recertification programs because they’re different components of one product with a single market, a Chicago federal judge ruled.

According to Bloomberg Law the ruling lines up with a prior decision dismissing an antitrust lawsuit against the American Board of Internal Medicine. A Philadelphia federal judge rejected the “tying” claims in that case, Kenney v. ABIM, in September. His logic was compelling, according to the Nov. 19 ruling by Judge Jorge L. Alonso of the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

In early 2019 a radiologist in Tennessee filed a federal class action lawsuit against the American Board of Radiology (ABR) that alleged the ABR was in violation of antitrust laws. The lawsuit was filed Feb. 26 in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, home of the ABR’s Chicago testing center.

According to the lawsuit, the ABR had illegally tied its initial certifications to its Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program, using “various anti-competitive, exclusionary, and unlawful actions” to promote the program.

Full Content: Bloomberg

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