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Clear, the digital identity verification company best known for helping travelers speed through airports, has set its sights on healthcare as the next market for its facial recognition technology. The company is working with a handful of hospitals and plans to pitch insurers to use the technology to expedite claim approvals and prior authorizations. It will have to get past skeptics' concerns about the data privacy of its program, which requires users to take a live photo that is matched against government-issued identification stored by the user on Clear's platform. (DeSilva, 10/22)

Linda Barbour thought she was more interested in the Change Healthcare cyberattack than most. Having worked as a medical director for several large health insurance companies and having suffered through the Change fiasco herself as a rehab doctor with a private practice in Kansas City, she figured that if her data had been exposed in that February breach, she would have been notified by now. (Trang, 10/23)

Health insurance company Centene accused U.S. regulators of unfairly downgrading the star ratings for its government-funded Medicare plans in a lawsuit on Tuesday. The company alleged in its complaint, filed in St. Louis, Missouri, federal court, that the lower ratings would cause it to lose customers and up to $73 million in gross revenue, which could be used to reduce premiums and increase benefits for its members. (Pierson, 10/22)

At least 22,000 Massachusetts residents will soon lose access to their primary care doctors and specialists at Boston Children’s Hospital and UMass Memorial Health in Worcester because their insurer, Point32Health, was unable to negotiate a new contract with the health systems. And the number of patients scrambling could grow soon to nearly 40,000 because Point32Health, the state’s second-largest insurer, is also at an impasse with a third health system, Tenet Healthcare, the for-profit owner of three hospitals in the Worcester and Framingham areas. (Saltzman and Gerber, 10/22)

CarePoint Health in Jersey City is advancing a planned merger with other hospitals in a bid to save its struggling finances, despite a legal battle that almost severed its lifeline, according to reports. CarePoint Health’s board of trustees greenlit its planned affiliation with Hudson Regional Hospital in a meeting last week, according to a report published in Becker’s Hospital Review on Monday. (D'Ambrosio, 10/22)

Mercy, one of the largest health systems in St. Louis region and in the U.S., announced Tuesday it has teamed up with health insurance plan Centivo as its contract with Anthem Blue Cross is set to expire at the end of the year. (Munz, 10/22)

Home care provider Compassus will take over management of Providence’s home-based care services through a joint venture the two companies announced Tuesday. Under the arrangement, Brentwood, Texas-based Compassus would manage and jointly own Providence’s home health, hospice, community-based palliative care and private duty nursing services under the name Providence at Home with Compassus, the companies said in a news release. (Eastabrook, 10/22)

Nevada’s first stand-alone children’s hospital is coming to the Las Vegas Valley. Intermountain Health unveiled the site of its future stand-alone children’s hospital on Wednesday at UNLV’s Harry Reid Research and Technology Park in the southwest valley, according to a news release. (Lane, 10/22)