Bundeskartellamt clears merger between Charité and Deutsches Herzzentrum Berlin

07.06.2021

The Bundeskartellamt has cleared plans to merge the cardiosurgical and cardiological services of the Charité and Deutsches Herzzentrum Berlin, allowing for the establishment of the heart centre “Deutsches Herzzentrum der Charité” at the joint location of Campus Virchow-Klinikum. The authority cleared the merger after an extensive preliminary examination under merger control.

Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt: “With Charité and the Vivantes clinics the federal state of Berlin holds a prominent position in the hospital markets in the city. Deutsches Herzzentrum Berlin is a leader in heart surgery. The two hospitals are already very closely connected in the area of cardiac medicine so that the effects of the merger for competition will be very minimal. In addition, patients will still have sufficient alternative hospital operators to choose from after the merger. In examining the merger we also analysed possible efficiency gains, i.a. those expected from the construction of a new building.”

The Charité as the university hospital of the federal state of Berlin and Deutsches Herzzentrum Berlin (“DHZB”) as an independent foundation in the federal state of Berlin are legally separate organisations. However, DHZB’s hospital operation service, in particular its internationally renowned heart surgery department, has up to now already worked very closely with the directly neighbouring Charité at the Campus Virchow-Klinikum. The cardiac departments of these two hospitals are now to be joined together to form an internationally leading heart centre. To this effect the Charité will acquire the hospital operation service of the DHZB Foundation and erect a new building funded by the federal government and the federal state of Berlin at the Campus Virchow-Klinikum, in which the heart surgery and cardiological departments of Charité and DHZB will be brought together under one roof meeting modern medical standards. Moreover, the new building, which is to be erected within the next few years, will be equipped with a central emergency department and a helicopter pad on the roof, offering speedier treatment for a large number of emergency patients from Berlin, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
For further details on the examination under merger control, see case summary of 7 June 2021 (in German). An English version will be published on the Bundeskartellamt’s website very shortly.

Background:
As in the 1970s some heart patients in West Berlin had to be “flown out” because there was no adequate heart surgery department, the federal state of Berlin set up the DHZB Foundation in 1985 and installed a heart surgery department in Berlin-Wedding at the site of Rudolf-Virchow-Klinikum. In addition to heart transplanta-tions, artificial heart and heartlung transplantations have been carried out here since the late 80s. After German reunification the directly neighbouring Rudolf-Virchow-Klinikum became part of Humboldt University and is now the Campus-Virchow-Klinikum of the Charité. With its clinic for cardiovascular surgery the Charité also operates a specialist department for heart surgery at the same location.

Irrespective of their operators, hospitals are independently active as entrepreneurs and compete with one another. Due to strict legal provisions there is almost no price competition in this sector. It is therefore the main objective of merger control to maintain competition in the quality of healthcare for patients. It is crucial to ensure that patients have sufficient local options to choose from.

In spite of the growing concentration in the hospital sector only very few mergers had to be prohibited by the Bundeskartellamt in recent years. Of the altogether 341 transactions notified between 2003 and July 2020 only seven were prohibited. Eight merger projects were not notified after they had been critically assessed following an informal advance enquiry.

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