The Department of Justice (DOJ) has formed a new enforcement arm — the Task Force Health Care Monopolies and Collusion (HCMC) — to guide the department’s policy approach for healthcare, but also to pursue investigations as well as civil and criminal enforcement in healthcare.

“The task force will identify and root out monopolies and collusive practices that increase costs, decrease quality and create single points of failure in the health care industry,” said Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division in a statement adding that “a small number of payers, providers and dominant intermediaries” have “consolidated their way to power in communities across the country,” gobbling up trillions of dollars.

The DOJ said the HCMC will consider “widespread competition concerns” regarding payer-provider consolidation as well as serial acquisitions, labor and quality of care, medical billing, healthcare IT services, access to and misuse of healthcare data and more.

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