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When Fred Bedell entered the emergency room on Oct. 12, 2020, he was in the throes of tremendous abdominal pain. The situation was frightening, but Bedell, a 60-year-old father of two, had little reason to doubt that he’d receive anything except excellent care at Florida Lake City Hospital, a 113-bed facility about 60 miles west of Jacksonville. For the past several years, the local chamber of commerce had named it the “Best of the Best.” (Melby, Mosendz, and Buhayar, 7/24)

Americans are more and more likely to get health care not from doctors, but from nurse practitioners. It’s one of the fastest-growing professions in the US — and the number of nurse practitioners in the country is expected to climb 45% by 2032. But training for the booming profession has never been standardized, and some students worry they’re not being set up for success. (Fox, Holder, Lu, and Sugiura, 7/24)

More than 400 nurse practitioners, physician assistants, certified nurse midwives and clinical nurse specialists who work at a variety of clinics and hospitals in Duluth-based Essentia Health’s eastern market voted Tuesday to form a union. It is the first time so-called “advanced practice providers” have unionized at Essentia. (Kraker, 7/24)

Healthcare’s staffing crisis shows no sign of slowing in the second half of 2024, with many clinical roles continuing to go unfilled. Healthcare employment has been on the rise in all sectors this year, pushed higher by a surge in ambulatory healthcare services and mounting pressure on facilities to meet staffing minimums. Employers are doing what they can to recruit workers by increasing wages while also turning to technology to improve workforce efficiency. (Devereaux, 7/24)

It’s no secret that UnitedHealth is a colossus: It’s the country’s largest health insurer and the fourth-largest company of any type by revenue, just behind Apple. And thanks to a series of stealthy deals, almost 1 in 10 U.S. doctors — some 90,000 clinicians — now either work for UnitedHealth or are under its influence, more than any major clinic chain or hospital system. (Herman, Bannow, Ross and Lawrence, 7/25)