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The Federal Trade Commission does not have authority to enact its ban on noncompete agreements, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. Judge Ada Brown wrote the FTC's near-total ban is "unreasonably overbroad without a reasonable explanation," siding with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and tax firm Ryan LLC. Many healthcare organizations include noncompete agreements in employment contracts. (Hudson, 8/20)

Epic is planning to deepen its relationships with health insurance companies, the electronic health record giant said at its annual user group meeting Tuesday. The EHR company is working with health systems and large insurers such as CVS Health subsidiary Aetna, Elevance Health and multiple Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans to streamline prior authorization requests and ease provider appeals to payers, Epic founder and CEO Judy Faulkner said during a keynote address. (Turner, 8/20)

Hospital supply chain software company Clarium raised $10.5 million in a funding round, the startup said Tuesday. The round was led by venture capital firm General Catalyst, with backing from the venture arms of Oakland, California-based Kaiser Permanente and Houston-based Texas Medical Center. New Haven, Connecticut-based Yale New Haven Health also joined the round. Other investors included venture capital firms AlleyCorp, 1984 Ventures and Alumni Ventures. (Perna, 8/20)

Steward Health Care filed a complaint Monday alleging Medical Properties Trust is interfering in its efforts to sell off assets, which the landlord denies. In Monday's complaint, Steward alleged Medical Properties Trust has undermined the bankruptcy sales process by talking to bidders without Steward's consent and pressuring bidders to allocate too much value to the landlord's real estate. (Hudson, 8/20)

A struggle between Northeast Florida’s largest health care system and its largest health insurance provider has left tens of thousands of people with uncertainty about their future health care. The three-year hospital-insurer agreement between Baptist Health and Florida Blue will expire Sept. 30. If the two do not come to a new agreement, as many as 50,000 people will be forced to find medical solutions or pay for out-of-network costs to use certain Baptist facilities, physicians or services. (Brown, 8/20)

All four candidates who pushed for "medical freedom" platforms and were critical of Sarasota Memorial Hospital have lost to Republican opponents in a primary race for the county's public hospital board seats on Tuesday. (Colombini, 8/20)

Joseph Zubretsky will remain at the helm for Molina Healthcare through at least 2027, the health insurance company announced in a news release Tuesday. The executive retains the same compensation package except for the addition of a stock grant that would vest at the close of 2027, Molina Healthcare disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Tuesday. (DeSilva, 8/20)

Home health services company Interim HealthCare has tapped Rexanne Domico as its president and chief operating officer, effective immediately. Interim HealthCare provides home health, non-medical home care, hospice and medical staffing services across 42 states. Domico will oversee operations of Interim’s more than 300 franchise locations and its clinical, quality, operations excellence, and growth and development divisions, a company spokesperson said Tuesday. (Eastabrook, 8/20)

Two years ago, President Joe Biden set out to tackle chronic safety and quality problems in the nursing home sector. Whether he succeeded won't be known until after he exits the White House. The nursing home campaign launched at the State of the Union address in 2022, in the aftermath of devastation that COVID-19 wrought on nursing homes. ... Considering these and other efforts, Biden oversaw the most consequential period in nursing home regulation since President Ronald Reagan enacted the Nursing Home Reform Act of 1987, said David Grabowski, a health policy professor at Harvard Medical School. (Early, 8/20)

Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News: Patient Underwent One Surgery But Was Billed For Two. Even After Being Sued, She Refused To Pay

Jamie Holmes says a surgery center tried to make her pay for two operations after she underwent only one. She refused to buckle, even after a collection agency sued her last winter. Holmes, who lives in northwestern Washington state, had surgery in 2019 to have her fallopian tubes tied, a permanent birth-control procedure that her insurance company agreed ahead of time to cover. (Leys, 8/21)