The U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s new healthcare task force, announced last month, highlights antitrust enforcers’ heightened focus on the health care sector, attorneys say.

Sean McConnell, a partner at Duane Morris, said that while the task force might not mark a shift in priorities, it shows a new focus on having the antitrust and consumer protection branches of the agency work together more closely. That could mean that what begins as a simple consumer protection investigation could broaden into an antitrust investigation, or vice versa.

“The real story is that the agency has dismantled the internal wall between competition and consumer protection, which will likely mean that it will be a more coordinated enforcement approach,” he said.

Attorneys say that it is too soon to predict specifics of enforcement actions that could come from the task force. But some say that the consumer protection focus provides clues.

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