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Employers across Southwest and Southside Virginia are seeking to hire more than 5,000 registered nurses and thousands of other healthcare professionals, according to a new report. (Schabacker, 9/15)

About 150 doctors at Allina Health’s Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids and its Unity campus in Fridley began a four-day strike Monday after three years of failed contract negotiations. Dozens of doctors and nurses rallied outside Mercy Hospital in a demonstration held by Doctors Council-SEIU, the union that represents the physicians. (Zurek, 9/14)

GoHealth is winding down its Chicago headquarters just months after attempting a reorganization in bankruptcy court. The online health insurance exchange operator says in a filing with the state of Illinois it will lay off 103 of 111 employees at the Merchandise Mart, ranging from the C-suite to the call center. (Pletz, 9/14)

In 2022, North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services approved new hospital beds to be built in Western North Carolina for the first time in more than a decade. According to the formula the state uses annually to determine which areas require expanded medical services, Buncombe and its neighboring counties were due for 67 more acute care beds. (Thomae, 9/15)

Health systems are spending big on talent, technology and infrastructure to move increasingly complex procedures outside the hospital and into lower-cost outpatient facilities. Payers offering value-based care arrangements and higher reimbursements for outpatient care, plus a need for greater inpatient capacity for the sickest patients, are compelling system leaders to rethink where higher-acuity care is delivered. The transition to outpatient facilities for specialties such as orthopedics, cardiology and oncology requires steep investments upfront that systems hope will pay off in long-term cost savings and stronger margins. (Hudson, 9/14)

GE HealthCare may be talking with cancer scan chemicals company Sofie Biosciences for a billion-dollar acquisition, the Financial Times reports. GEHC, the Chicago-based medical imaging giant, could take over the private equity-backed Sofie, which produces radioactive chemicals used in PET scans for cancer. The deal could tie into GEHC’s theranostics specialty, a burgeoning nuclear medicine strategy for the company. (Asplund, 9/14)

A coalition of 67 health care industry and advocacy groups is urging Congress to revisit a surprise medical billing law to address an unforeseen problem from its enactment: the ballooning costs of settling disputes when services are performed out of network. (Cohen, 9/14)

Few patients appeal when insurers decline to pay for their care. Many don’t even know they can. But new data show that when they do, they frequently win — in some plans, nine out of 10 times. That dynamic means many Americans can’t get the care their doctors have prescribed without first wading through a bureaucratic process known as prior authorization. Insurers use the practice to decide whether they’ll cover a procedure or drug, and to help avert what they deem unnecessary care. But the high rate at which some companies overturn their own decisions raises questions about why they’re denying so many doctors’ orders in the first place. (Tozzi, Meghjani and Swetlitz, 9/14)