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After months of public sparring, Atrium Health and the State Health Plan have reached a deal that allows state employees, retirees and their family members to see Atrium doctors next year at roughly the same out-of-pocket costs they pay now. (Crouch and Hoban, 10/27)

Former workers at Northview Village, the nursing home in north St. Louis that shut down unexpectedly overnight in late 2023, have reached a settlement in a suit they filed against the facility’s owners. (Fentem, 10/27)

Quorum Health, a troubled for-profit chain of rural hospitals backed by private equity firm GoldenTree Asset Management, plans to finance its conversion to a nonprofit with a $1.3 billion bond sale next month. The network moved one step closer to proceeding with the debt issuance by obtaining the final state approval necessary for the transaction. Quorum operates 11 hospitals in nine states including New Mexico, California and Oregon. (Querolo and Braun, 10/27)

HealthLinc and Opportunity Enterprises broke ground Monday for a new community clinic that will be one of just a few in the nation to be accessible to people of all abilities. (Ross, 10/27)

Northwestern Medicine has consolidated its robust transplant program into a new Transplant Institute, with a focus on tech and innovation. Spearheaded by transplant surgeon Dr. Satish Nadig, the announcement of the Northwestern Medicine Transplant Institute comes just a month after the hospital’s 3,000th liver transplant, according to a spokesperson for Northwestern Medicine. (Miller, 10/27)

�Թϲ�����: Hospital Beds For The Nation’s Sickest Kids Are Disappearing

Hospital units dedicated to treating the nation’s sickest kids are disappearing nationwide. In the past year alone, hospitals have closed pediatric intensive care units for critically ill kids in Montana, Oregon, and Missouri. Overnight hospital wings for kids have also shuttered in Illinois and California. Depending on the hospital, pediatric units — which are separate from neonatal intensive care units — can serve patients ranging from a few weeks old to well into their teens or early adulthood. As hospitals look to cut costs, many are converting those beds into more services for newborns or adults. As a result, pediatric intensive care has become centralized in medical hubs, requiring critically ill children to travel farther for lifesaving care. (Houghton, 10/28)

When Grace Gutlovics was 21 and newly employed as a paramedic, she experienced a “mental health crisis” that led her to spend 35 days at a treatment center for first responders. At the time, Gutlovics had been working in emergency medical services for about three years, and needed help coping with the trauma associated with her job and deciding whether she could continue working in the field. (Zurek, 10/28)

In a reversal of its original findings, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) said members who were kicked out of its annual meeting in June did not violate its code of conduct. Instead, the final report of its governance committee, which the ADA shared publicly, said one of the members threatened in an email to "disrupt and protest" a keynote address, raising security concerns. (Fiore, 10/27)

CVS Health is the latest company to challenge the 2027 Medicare Advantage star ratings in court. The Aetna parent company sued the Health and Human Services Department and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia on Monday, alleging the government violated the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 when calculating its 2027 quality scores. Aetna estimates its lower star ratings will cost it $2 billion in bonus payments in 2028. This marks the fifth lawsuit to date over the 2027 star ratings since CMS announced the scores on Oct. 8. (Tepper, 10/27)

Qun Wan was in the middle of a heated call with his daughter, Bowen Wan, when the phone suddenly went silent. The conversation, in early February, had started like most of their regular check-ins, a ritual that had kept them connected after Bowen moved from their small village in China to the United States. But the mood soured when she admitted she had been cutting back on a seizure medication that kept her severe epilepsy under control. She told him she had been slicing her tablets into pieces with a pill cutter, allowing her to reduce her dose by one-fourth, Qun recalled. (Rosenbluth, 10/27)

Legal liability should be a growing concern for providers as health systems deepen their investments in artificial intelligence, experts say. Legal experts haven’t seen an onslaught of AI-related healthcare cases yet, but potentially costly lawsuits could be coming down the pike. Health systems may need to prepare for patients suing for clinical errors that stem from reliance on an AI tool, like a clinical decision support product. (Famakinwa, 10/27)