By Brent Kendall

A subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group Inc. has been indicted on antitrust charges that it maintained yearslong agreements with rival health-care firms not to recruit each other's senior-level employees.

Surgical Care Affiliates was indicted on two counts in a federal district court in Texas. The Justice Department has not yet announced the case, but the indictment returned by a grand jury was posted on the court's docket late Wednesday.

SCA is a leading provider of surgical centers around the U.S., with more than 200 facilities. UnitedHealth's Optum health-services arm acquired the company in 2017.

UnitedHealth didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Justice Department in previous years has brought civil cases challenging no-poach agreements, especially in the tech sector, against companies including Apple Inc., Google Inc. and Intel Corp. When businesses agree not to recruit or hire each other's workers, it robs employees of opportunities, information and the ability to use competing offers to negotiate better terms, the department has argued.

Write to Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 07, 2021 11:19 ET (16:19 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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