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The federal government's Health & Human Services (HHS) is pushing to investigate Johns Hopkins Hospital and its Health System. On Tuesday evening HHS General Counsel, Mike Stuart, said he referred Hopkins to the Office of Inspector General for allegedly "continuing to perform heinous and horrific acts of intentional permanent harm to minors," which he says includes "sex-mutilating and sex-rejecting procedures." (Dickstein, 2/4)

Inside the stilled courtroom, an attorney asked a simple question and the mother on the witness stand began to cry. Where is your daughter right now? The question came during a hearing this week in Denver District Court in a lawsuit over Children’s Hospital Colorado’s suspension of gender-affirming care for transgender youth, a decision Children’s made in the face of escalating threats from the federal government. (Ingold, 2/6)

The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division is investigating Baltimore's Health Department (BCHD) over allegations that it holds racially segregated trainings, according to a letter to city officials on Wednesday. The investigation aims to determine if the department is violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by engaging in discriminatory employment practices. The measure prevents employers from discriminating against employees or applicants based on race, religion or sex. (Lockman, 2/5)

There were protests and arrests on Day 25 of the New York City nurses strike, but also progress in negotiations on some of the key issues that remain. Nurses rallied Thursday on Manhattan's West Side and outside The Mount Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side, saying the New York State Nurses Association has more to do at the bargaining table, though they are closer to a deal. (Williams, 2/5)

The nation’s largest healthcare educator is changing its name, marking another chapter in its years-long transformation from a for-profit jack-of-all-trades school once mired in controversy to a multi-university network putting doctors, nurses and veterinarians into the U.S. workplace. Adtalem Global Education has become Covista, the Chicago-based education company said this morning, with a plan to expand its healthcare career network and establish itself as a major player in the nation’s health workforce infrastructure. (Asplund, 2/5)

A Houston doctor has been indicted on charges of falsifying medical records for five patients, making them ineligible to receive a liver transplant, federal prosecutors announced on Thursday. Dr. John Stevenson Bynon Jr. was indicted by a grand jury in Houston last month on five counts of false statements relating to health care matters. Bynon is accused of making false statements in his role as director of abdominal organ transplantation and surgical director for liver transplantation at Memorial Hermann Health System in Houston. (Lozano, 2/6)

Surgeons at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago were able to keep a critically ill patient alive for 48 hours after removing both of his lungs, the hospital reported last week. The patient, a 33-year-old Missouri resident whose name was not shared, was originally flown to Northwestern Memorial Hospital with lung failure linked to a flu infection in spring 2023. (Rudy, 2/5)

Apple Inc. is scaling back plans for a virtual health coach, according to people with knowledge of the matter, part of an effort to rethink how the company approaches the burgeoning market for wellness services. The initiative, code-named Mulberry, was wound down in recent weeks, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the move wasn’t public. Apple now plans to take some of the features it had planned for the artificial intelligence-powered offering and roll them out individually over time within its Health app. (Gurman, 2/5)