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Elevance Health will buy private firm Paragon Healthcare for more than $1 billion, according to three people familiar with the matter, Axios reported on Thursday. The health insurer had said earlier on Thursday it would acquire Paragon Healthcare, but did not disclose the financials of the deal. (1/4)

Plano, Texas-based Paragon Healthcare specializes in infusible and injectable therapies and serves more than 35,000 patients with chronic and acute conditions. It operates more than 40 ambulatory infusion centers in eight states: Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. Elevance aims to grow the provider’s footprint and operations following completion of the deal, according to the release. (Berryman, 1/4)

Two former UnitedHealth Group executives allegedly took trade secrets with them on the way out the door and used the information to found a pair of diabetes management startups, the conglomerate claims in a federal lawsuit. UnitedHealth Group filed suit against Ken Ehlert, Mark Pollmann and other leaders of Lore Health and Sequelae in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota on Dec. 28. (Tepper, 1/4)

Two couples have sued fertility technology company CooperSurgical, claiming that a solution made by the company for growing embryos for in vitro fertilization was toxic and killed the embryos they hoped to use to have children. In a pair of lawsuits filed in California Superior Court in Los Angeles on Thursday, the two couples said CooperSurgical belatedly recalled several lots of its so-called embryo culture medium late last year, after the embryos were lost. They said the company has not made any public statement about the recall, leaving fertility patients in the dark. (Pierson, 1/4)

Amid growing cybersecurity threats to health care facilities, federal officials and health systems are turning their attention to potential vulnerabilities hiding in plain sight in hospital rooms, imaging centers and even patients' homes: medical devices. Hackers have especially targeted health systems for their valuable troves of patient data and in some cases have temporarily knocked systems offline, disrupting patient care. (Reed, 1/4)

The former Westside Pavilion, a long shuttered indoor mall, will be transformed into a UCLA biomedical research center aimed at tackling such towering challenges as curing cancer and preventing global pandemics, officials announced Wednesday. The sprawling three-story structure will be known as the UCLA Research Park and will house two multidisciplinary centers focusing on immunology and immunotherapy as well as quantum science and engineering. (Vincent and Petersen, 1/4)

Through the long, busy months of autumn, the calls kept coming in: Mothers losing grip of their children while trying to cross the treacherous waters of the Rio Grande. Pregnant women getting caught in barbed wire. Bodies washing up on shore. Cities like New York and Chicago have struggled in recent months to accommodate the busloads of migrants arriving during the latest surge in migration. But here on the border, the small town of Eagle Pass, Texas, has been one of several cities facing an even more difficult challenge. Up to 5,000 migrants a day were crossing the border there from Mexico during the height of the influx in recent weeks, gathering along the river, running through people’s yards and looking for help. (Sandoval, 1/4)

More than 800,000 Connecticut residents had their personal information compromised during a data breach of an online wellness program used by health care providers and businesses, including some Connecticut health systems. (Carlesso, 1/4)

Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News: Listen To ‘Tradeoffs’: How The Loss Of A Rural Hospital Compounds The Collapse Of Care 

The share of rural Americans who live in communities without a hospital grows each year. It’s part of an ongoing collapse in rural health care that has persisted for decades and isn’t improving, despite regulatory efforts to shore up small-hospital finances. Since 2010, about 150 rural hospitals have shuttered and hundreds more have slashed services, leaving a growing number of America’s 60 million rural residents in health care deserts. (1/5)

At least 24 American service members, civilian Defense Department employees or military dependents have been turned away for medical care from Japanese hospitals in the past two years, and four have died, according to Navy and Marine Corps leadership responsible for personnel in Japan. In one case, a 7-year-old child who suffered a traumatic brain injury last January died from the oxygen deprivation she experienced as ambulance techs spent 35 minutes searching for a facility that would take her. (Kime, 1/4)