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At 4 a.m. Saturday, when the city’s public-hospital network expects to switch on its new electronic medical-records system at two hospitals in Queens, its president and chief executive plans to be at Elmhurst Hospital. “I will be physically present,” said Ramanathan Raju, a trauma surgeon who became head of the system in 2014. “People will be anxious.” The $764 million implementation is the latest step in what hospital officials hope will be a five-year transformation of the financially troubled public health system. NYC Health + Hospitals, which until a $250,000 rebranding in November was called New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, concluded last fiscal year with a $58 million operating loss. (Ramey, 3/28)

The Federal Trade Commission will hold its challenge of a West Virginia hospital merger while it examines a new state law that aims to protect the deal from federal antitrust scrutiny. The FTC's order (PDF), issued Thursday, delays for 30 days administrative law proceedings over Cabell Huntington Hospital's proposed acquisition of St. Mary's Medical Center, also located in Huntington. A hearing before an administrative law judge had been scheduled for April 5. The order follows the recent signing of a new West Virginia law designed to shield hospital mergers from state and federal antitrust review, assuming they get certain other state approvals. (Schencker, 3/28)

Giving birth outside of a hospital has become more common in the U.S., especially for white women, with almost 60,000 out-of-hospital births in 2014, according to a new study. “I think it speaks to some women’s growing discomfort with the standard hospital-based system of childbirth in the U.S,” said lead author Marian F. MacDorman of the Maryland Population Research Center at the University of Maryland in College Park. (Doyle, 3/28)