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Hospitals will likely spend more to protect themselves from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ expanded powers to kick them out of government health programs, which would be ruinous for many providers. Under a notice issued last week that immediately went into effect, CMS can remove healthcare organizations from these programs on its own authority. Previously, the Health and Human Services Department Office of Inspector General was the only agency with that power. (Kacik, 10/20)

The stakes are getting higher for technology vendors working with health plans, employers and health systems. These organizations are increasingly entering into performance-based contracts with digital health companies and zeroing in on return on investment and measurable outcomes. About 55% of health plans and 46% of health systems tie vendors’ payment to prespecified outcomes, according to a survey published in September by the Peterson Health Technology Institute. (Famakinwa, 10/20)

The United States spends nearly $6 trillion a year on healthcare, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, more than twice as much as any other wealthy nation. One strategy to reduce health costs is to require hospitals to publicly post their prices. The Trump administration and Wyoming lawmakers believe this will give consumers the option to shop around. Wyoming hospitals are required by law to do just that starting this July. (Galatas, 10/20)

A decade ago, having joint replacement often meant a three- to five-day hospital stay. Today, many patients have surgery and go home the same day. While ambulatory surgery centers have existed for over 50 years, medical advances now allow more orthopedic patients to have complex procedures as outpatients, too. (Tanner, 10/21)

The red-brick nursing home tucked off a busy road in Taunton used to be a rare jewel in a beleaguered industry, polished to a high sheen. Floors gleamed from daily scrubbing. Residents’ clothes came back fresh and neatly folded. Employees stayed for decades. In early 2020, the 100-bed home earned the federal government’s highest quality rating — five stars — and held it for more than two years. Then Eli Mirlis swept in from New Jersey and everything changed. (Lazar, Hagen and Nadolny, 10/20)

Minutes after an autistic 3-year-old lay her head on a Squishmallow stuffed toy and closed her eyes, Abigayle Hosking was ordered to take the makeshift pillow away and rouse the sleepy girl. The child was scheduled for four more hours of autism therapy at the Centria Healthcare clinic in Michigan where Hosking worked until last year. Hosking said she felt terrible. “The younger kids, you know, I think they need a break,” she said. (Wilde Mathews, Weaver and McGinty, 10/20)

On a heavily wooded tract near the intersection of U.S. 1 and N.C. 540 — a 220-acre spot in southern Apex so void of infrastructure it shows up only as GPS coordinates on a map, the Duke Endowment announced a transformative $100 million grant Tuesday morning. The investment will help fund North Carolina Children’s, a collaborative effort between UNC Health and Duke Health to create an independent standalone health care system that, if true to their vision, will turn the southwest Wake County property into a destination for pediatric care. (Blythe, 10/21)

Carilion Clinic broke ground Tuesday on a freestanding emergency department in Daleville that will also house specialty medical services. The new facility, adjacent to Carilion Clinic Family Medicine, will dedicate its first floor to emergency care and its second floor to general surgery, orthopedics, cardiology, OB-GYN and imaging services, Paul Davenport, senior vice president for ambulatory operations at Carilion, said at the groundbreaking. (Schabacker, 10/21)

Hackensack Meridian Health and Hunterdon Health, both based in New Jersey, have signed a definitive agreement to merge. As part of the agreement, Hackensack Meridian said it plans to invest $200 million into capital projects that support Hunterdon facilities and programs. Hackensack also pledged to fund the $30 million rollout of its Epic electronic health record at Hunterdon. (Hudson, 10/20)

Nearly half of US parents believe children are healthier when vaccines are spaced out and not given in one doctor’s visit, even as confidence in several well-established childhood vaccines remains high, according to a KFF Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust. The poll, published today, also found partisan differences in parents’ views, with Republican and Republican-leaning parents more likely to endorse spacing out childhood vaccines and Democratic and Democratic-leaning parents more likely to say there is no strong evidence to support spacing. (Bergeson, 10/20)

This summer, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) requested public comment on categories of vaccine recommendations, with many questions focused on the idea of shared clinical decision making. The request came after an executive order directed the Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines to come up with a plan for a new childhood vaccine schedule. (Holohan, 10/20)

For young children, exposure to hepatitis B virus (HBV) mostly came from someone other than their mother in the household, according to a retrospective cohort study. Among over 158,000 children younger than 5 years, 1.3% lived in a household that had a person with active HBV infection, with 58.2% of those children exposed via contacts who were not their mothers versus 41.8% who were exposed via their mothers, reported Karen Jacobson, MD, MPH, of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center in Pleasanton, California, at the IDWeek annual meeting. (Rudd, 10/21)

The FDA on Tuesday approved bepirovirsen (Hibsago) as a potential functional cure for adults with chronic hepatitis B, but with no cirrhosis, who are taking antiviral therapy. Approval was based on findings from the B-Well 1 and B-Well 2 trials, which demonstrated that nearly 1 in 5 patients taking the antisense oligonucleotide drug along with background antivirals achieved a functional cure, as compared with none in a placebo group. (Rudd, 10/20)

Children who started the two-dose human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine series at age 9 or 10 years were more than twice as likely to get both shots versus those who began later, a cluster randomized trial showed. (Rudd, 10/21)

Amid ongoing angst over prescription drug prices, a new analysis found the median net price for 202 newly launched medicines, when adjusted for inflation and manufacturer discounts, rose by 35% to $257,000 in 2025 from $190,000 in 2022. (Silverman, 10/20)

OpenAI has acquired Orchestra Bio, a startup building AI agents to help pharmaceutical companies manage drug development, the ChatGPT maker shared exclusively with Axios. (Mills, 10/20)

Billionaire Mark Cuban has spent the last five years trying to make generic drugs like chemotherapy and antifungal ointment cheaper for Americans. But earlier this year, a very different type of medicine began arriving at his Dallas factory. (Mast, 10/21)

Chemotherapy shortages increased in the third quarter even as the number of active U.S. drug shortages held steady at 225, according to ASHP’s latest quarterly report. Here are seven things to know: The rise in cancer drug shortages stems in part from flooding at a Pfizer manufacturing facility in India that produced generic chemotherapy agents for leukemia, Hodgkin lymphoma and colorectal, pancreatic and testicular cancers, among others, according to the report. Pfizer expects the disruption to last into 2028, the group said. (Jeffries, 10/20)

Apothecary Pharma, a compounding pharmacy, voluntarily recalled 22 vials of Tirzepatide injections due to a “lack of assurance of sterility,” according to the official announcement. (Garcia, 10/20)

How would you like your ketamine? In tablet form, or a thin film that melts in your mouth? Delivered as a nasal spray, or combined with a cancer drug to extend the antidepressant effects? In a gold rush accelerated by the Trump administration’s unlikely zeal for experimental psychedelic treatments, over a dozen companies are developing products based on ketamine, the generic anesthetic that in recent years has become a popular treatment for mental health conditions. (And, unfortunately, a ubiquitous recreational drug.) (Jacobs, 10/20)

A new health alert from the Pennsylvania Department of Health is warning doctors about congenital measles, a disease that was once extremely rare in the United States. But now that dozens of pregnant Pennsylvania women have contracted measles in the state’s ongoing outbreak, the potentially fatal infection passed from mother to baby in utero is poised to pose clinical challenges for physicians facing a disease they’ve never seen in practice. (Soucheray, 10/20)

The Centers for Disease Control and ​Prevention (CDC) has added a third U.S. measles death to its national tracker as total cases for 2026 surpass 4,400. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told Reuters the CDC updated its count after the National Center for Health Statistics received ​a report of a measles-related death and verified the disease was the underlying cause, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement. The agency’s database does not specify when or where the death occurred. According to the statement, the CDC is working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists to develop a standardized case definition for deaths due to measles. (Chakraborty, 10/20)

With more than 4,400 measles cases in the United States this year, double the number in 2025, public health authorities are desperate to persuade more people to take the virus seriously. But current attempts to drive home that message are being rejected by a sizable and growing part of the population. (Florko, 10/21)

Just in time for spooky season, the flu has begun skulking back through Colorado, worrying health officials who fear a repeat of last year’s record-breaking run of infections. (Ingold, 10/19)

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced a new Salmonella outbreak linked to raw oysters harvested by the Little Wicomico Oyster Company from the Little Wicomico River harvest area in Virginia. So far at least 27 people in 12 states have been sickened in the outbreak. Five people have been hospitalized, and no deaths have been reported. Pennsylvania has had the most illnesses, with eight, followed by New York with four and Virginia with three. (Soucheray, 10/20)

Nigeria’s first Ebola infection in more than a decade is widening an outbreak that already spread to several African countries, prompting the continent’s top public-health agency to call for urgent international assistance. The Nigerian case was caused by the Bundibugyo strain, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Director-General Jean Kaseya said in a statement on Tuesday. The agency is mobilizing support for Nigeria, while intensifying its response in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya, he said. (Orjinmo and Kew, 10/20)

When a schoolteacher in eastern Congo learned that five of her family members had been diagnosed with Ebola, she was “deeply shaken,” fearing the worst from a disease that carries stigma and is seen by some in her community as evil. Two of her relatives — her brother and his wife — died of Ebola in July at a treatment center in Ituri province, the epicenter of the deadliest outbreak in Congo’s history. (Same Bagalwa, 10/21)

For the first time, scientists say they have used viruses designed by artificial intelligence to treat a human patient. Researchers announced on Tuesday that they had administered the virus, known as a phage, to a patient suffering from a deadly bacterial infection. Phages attack bacteria, and the hope is that this one will kill the microbes causing the infection. Radical Numerics, the start-up that created the viruses, posted a technical report about them on its website. But the company declined to provide information about the patient or the doctors running the trial, citing confidentiality requirements. (Zimmer, 10/20)

Five years after revealing she was diagnosed with the autoimmune disorder multiple sclerosis (MS), actress Christina Applegate has announced that she was misdiagnosed. Speaking on Tuesday's episode of her MeSsy podcast, which she co-hosts with actress Jamie Lynn Sigler, Applegate said she wasn't happy to learn of the misdiagnosis, revealing that she has "gotten worse in some ways" and is "back at square one that I don't know what's going on with me." (Kekatos, 10/20)

Christina Applegate announced Tuesday that she was misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis, more than five years after announcing she had been told she had the chronic condition. Applegate, 54, shared the news in a double episode of her podcast MeSsy, where she and co-host Jamie-Lynn Sigler discuss life with multiple sclerosis. Applegate had taken a break from the podcast in recent weeks. She said Tuesday she had taken that time to process the new information. (Breen, 10/20)

A car crash destroyed Katherine Screws’ small intestine, leaving her unable to eat, dependent on IV nutrition and often too sick to get out of bed. But the Phoenix woman clung to her hospital’s prediction that she could get an intestine transplant in about six months. That was way off. She wouldn’t get one until three years after the crash. It could have been longer if not for an unusual meeting with an organ procurement organization, or OPO, that taught the frustrated Screws how hospitals vary in which organs they accept or refuse — and she flew across the country for a better chance. (Neergaard, 10/21)

It’s not always patience and luck that get patients off the organ transplant waiting list and into the operating room. Unlike in many areas of medicine, experts say there’s a lot of variation in the U.S. transplant system. Knowing there are differences and what to ask might help. “I had to ask a lot of questions to figure out what it was that I could do to move the needle,” said Katherine Screws of Phoenix, who got a rare intestine transplant after she decided to get on the waiting list at more than one hospital to increase her chances. (Neergaard, 10/21)

Patients with acute low back pain (LBP) who got opioids or gabapentinoids as initial therapy faced twice the risk of opioid use disorder (OUD) or overdose compared with other first-line treatments, nationwide Medicaid data showed. (Gever, 10/20)

People diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) face a roughly 71% higher overall risk of early death compared to those without the condition, according to a new review published in JAMA Network Open. However, taking prescription ADHD medication may offer a protective benefit, lowering overall risk of death, the review found. (Quill, 10/20)

My morning routine isn’t complete without two calming yet energizing cups of green tea. Not only is a cup of tea highly enjoyable, but it has long been associated with health benefits, including a lower risk of heart disease, stroke and dementia. Now, a new study published Wednesday in the Journal of Internal Medicine suggests that how people prepare and drink their tea could also influence their cardiovascular health. (Chlu, 10/21)

California state workers will launch a one-day strike Wednesday, urging Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration to agree to a new contract that increases workers’ pay, ensures affordable healthcare access and allows more flexibility for remote work. SEIU Local 1000, the largest union for California government workers which represents more than 100,000 employees, including auditors, nurses and counselors, will picket in cities across the state for the first time since the union’s founding in 2004. Members overwhelmingly voted to authorize the strike earlier this month, accusing the state of failing to bargain in good faith after their contract expired in June. (Austin, 10/21)

As many as 29,000 people across the Granite State could lose Medicaid coverage by the time 2028 rolls around, according to a new report from the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute. (Wachman, 10/20)

Centene unveiled its Affordable Care Act health insurance exchanges strategy for 2027, which calls for both retrenchment and expansion. The marketplace market share leader will no longer sell policies in Delaware and New Hampshire next year, a company spokesperson said in an email. Centene, which sells exchange plans under its Ambetter Health brand, will be in 1,740 counties across 27 states for 2027, according to a news release on Tuesday. That is 40 more than this year. The company counts 3.5 million exchange members. (Tepper, 10/20)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: States Are Forcing Hospitals To Offer More People Financial Aid. In Oregon, It’s Working

Four years ago, Oregon hospitals were under fire from state authorities and patient advocates. Hospitals, critics said, had made it too hard for patients to apply for and receive help paying their bills. Within months, the state enacted a sweeping law that required hospitals to proactively screen patients and give financial aid to those who qualify for it. Oregon’s new rules, which took effect in July 2024, required hospitals to skip applications for nearly all patients — a rarity among hospitals nationwide. (Evans, 10/21)

Jeff Trowbridge was taking down Christmas decorations on the morning he got the call that wrecked him. The love of his life, Ian Horner, was missing. One of Horner’s relatives had called to ask Trowbridge if he knew the license plate number on Horner’s car. Soon after, Trowbridge would learn that Horner, 33, died by suicide in the middle of the night. (Brown, 10/20)

Legalizing sports betting is associated with an increase in the number of workers in a state receiving treatment for anxiety or depression, according to a recent Johns Hopkins study. (Hille, 10/20)

While U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was visiting New Hampshire last week, GO-NORTH announced a new $11 million project aimed at strengthening the state’s emergency medical services. (Skipworth, 10/20)

Attorney General James Uthmeier says a civil investigative subpoena has been issued to a Georgia company as part of an expanded investigation into the use of potassium bromate. (10/20)

A federal appeals court has put on hold a court-ordered takeover of healthcare operations in Arizona’s prisons that was scheduled to start Monday. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order late Friday blocking the start date as Arizona corrections officials are appealing the takeover, also known as a receivership. The court said letting the takeover start risks irreparable harm to the state if it wins the appeal and that the case raises questions about a federal judge’s authority over state prisons. (10/20)

The Chicago Department of Public Health has suspended the kitchen license at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Lakeview after more than 200 live cockroaches, black slime, grease buildup and other health violations were discovered during an inspection on Friday. (Miller, 10/20)

One research institute will receive $4.2 billion in bond money if voters approve Proposition 38 in November. Currently only one institute in the state meets the criteria to qualify for the money. (Zinshteyn, 10/20)

If you are an adolescent boy going through puberty, you may develop a condition called gynecomastia. Basically, the haywire hormones of the early teen years cause boys to develop breast tissue. The condition is generally not medically harmful, and it often goes away with time. But, in some cases, it doesn’t go away or is too embarrassing, and teens opt for breast-reduction surgery. (Ingold, 10/20)

Louisiana voters will decide whether water utilities should be explicitly allowed to use public funds to replace lead service lines on private property through a proposed constitutional amendment this election season. Early voting started Tuesday (Oct. 20) ahead of the Nov. 3 election with 10 proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot. One of the amendments is tailored to ensure the Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans can legally spend federal money earmarked for lead pipe replacement in the city. (Parker, 10/20)

A group of Michigan doctors is pushing back against attempts by Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate for Senate in Michigan, to characterize his opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, MD, DPhil, as not being a real doctor because he doesn't practice medicine in the state. "Dr. El-Sayed earned his medical degree and, like many of us at some point in our careers, faced a choice about where to direct a life in medicine," said a letter released Tuesday that was signed by more than 1,000 medical professionals, including 700 physicians. (Frieden, 10/20)

The steady decline of the U.S. fertility rate continued last year with another record low, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Bendix, 10/21)

In the four years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, triggering a near-total ban on abortion in Idaho, with the potential for criminal prosecution of any doctor who performed the procedure, OB-GYNs have been fleeing the state in extraordinary numbers. More than a third of Idaho’s OB-GYNs have stopped practicing obstetrics, left the state, closed their practices or retired since the ban took effect in August 2022, according to a study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association last year. By December 2025, there were just 170 obstetricians for the state’s roughly one million women — fewer than two doctors per 10,000. About five full-time maternal-fetal-medicine specialists, who serve the riskiest pregnancies, remained, according to a separate report released in 2024. One half of Idaho’s 44 counties no longer have a practicing obstetrician. (Lerer, 10/20)

More women are opting out of having babies in hospitals and choosing birth centers instead. These midwife-run centers for low-risk patients are especially popular in rural Western states, according to a report published on Tuesday by the Commonwealth Fund, a health research foundation. (Merzbach, 10/20)

Despite growing evidence that midwife-led birth centers improve outcomes for mothers and infants, Mississippi remains one of 10 states with no centers. Mississippi is also among the states with the fewest midwives per births in the nation, according to a new report by the Commonwealth Fund, a non-profit research organization focused on healthcare issues. (Paffenroth, 10/19) 

�������ýҕ�l Health News: New Arrivals In The ER? Georgia Gears Up To Solve Rural Maternal Health Crisis

It had been a decade since Kara Holden last had a baby. But as the former obstetric nurse prepared for her fourth child, her head was swimming with contingency plans. The labor and delivery unit where she used to work in this rural northeastern Georgia community is no longer open. So, she asked former co-workers to be on standby around her anticipated due date. She and her midwife mapped out emergency rooms along the more-than-50-mile trek to the hospital in Greenville, South Carolina, where she planned to give birth. And, to prepare for a worst-case scenario, she curated items to keep in the car in case she went into labor en route. (Lumpkins, 10/21)

The FDA on Monday approved the first generic of the once-weekly estradiol and levonorgestrel transdermal system (Climara Pro) to treat moderate to severe vasomotor symptoms and prevent osteoporosis in women. The patch is indicated for postmenopausal women with an intact uterus and follows recent endorsements from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American College of Physicians for menopausal symptoms. (Monaco, 10/20)

On Oct. 12, Pennsylvania confirmed its sixth measles-associated death this year. The state’s outbreak has spread to dozens of counties, sickened over 1,200 people, and put 176 in the hospital. More than 4,400 confirmed cases of measles have emerged across America this year, the most in more than three decades. (Raj Panjabi, 10/21)

Why do men in groups behave this way? (Kate Manne, 10/20)

When National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya started laying out his plans in 2025, he emphasized replication as part of the gold standard for science. In March, he launched the $850,000 Replication Prize for replicating high-impact areas of biomedical research. During his confirmation hearing, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested a replication effort worth 20% of the NIH’s $47 billion budget. (Mark Louie F. Ramos, 10/21)

We can prepare young women for the real world without repressing their liberty. (Jessica Grose, 10/21)

This fall, like every other, I tried to game the flu season. My goal, always, is to get my vaccine at just the right moment: before the first cases pop up, yet late enough so that its protective effects last beyond the holidays and well into January or February, when infections tend to peak. (Lisa Jarvis, 10/21)