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A nationwide health-care safety inspection group preliminarily denied accreditation last week to Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center in Maryland, the maximum-security psychiatric facility that has been beset by patient safety concerns, chronic understaffing and high leadership turnover. ... It was not immediately clear on Thursday what the commission’s decision is based on or what the accreditation trouble means for Perkins — a 289-bed facility in Jessup, Maryland, that houses people who have been charged with a violent crime and diagnosed with a serious mental illness. (Mettler, 4/10)

Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News: More Psych Hospital Beds Are Needed For Kids, But Neighbors Say Not Here

In January, a teenager in suburban St. Louis informed his high school counselor that a classmate said he planned to kill himself later that day. The 14-year-old classmate denied it, but his mother, Marie, tore through his room and found a suicide note in his nightstand. (She asked Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News to publish only her middle name because she does not want people to misjudge or label her son.) (Berger, 4/11)

An Arkansas bill that would prohibit pharmacy benefit managers from operating retail and mail-order pharmacies was passed by the state senate and is now headed to Gov. Sarah Sanders, the first time such a bill has gotten this far down the legislative path in the United States. (Silverman, 4/10)

State lawmakers advanced legislation Thursday that would allow the Alabama Farmers Federation to sell healthcare plans to its members that would not be considered or regulated as health insurance. The Alabama House of Representatives approved the bill on a 98-1 vote after nearly three hours of debate. The bill now moves to the Alabama Senate. The bill would allow the Alabama Farmers Federation (Alfa) to sell health plans to farmers and also to people outside of agriculture that join the organization. (Chandler, 4/11)

Health insurance companies are pushing back against proposals to allow farm bureaus in more states to sell cheaper, leaner health plans as alternatives to exchange policies. Lawmakers in Alabama, Florida, Maine, Missouri and Ohio are debating whether to let farm bureaus offer individual and small-group health plans that do not comply with the Affordable Care Act of 2010, which set coverage minimums for health insurance plans. The farm bureaus contend that, because premiums are based on health status rather than income, they are a better fit for agricultural workers whose earnings can be as unpredictable as the weather. (Tepper, 4/10)

A new Kansas law and a Florida bill outline policies backed by abortion opponents that critics see as moves toward giving embryos and fetuses the same rights as the women carrying them. The Kansas Legislature’s Republican supermajorities on Thursday overrode Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a bill to require that child support payments cover embryos and fetuses and to grant an income tax break for a pregnancy or stillbirth. In Florida, lawmakers are advancing a bill that would permit parents to seek civil damages for the wrongful death of an embryo or fetus. (Payne and Hanna, 4/11)

Advocates say school-based telehealth care reduces absenteeism, ensures students receive routine care, and can even boost test scores. (Fernandez, 4/11)

All sense of survivors’ guilt was fleeting for those residents whose homes remained standing after wildfires ripped through the Los Angeles area three months ago. Many worried that smoke from the Eaton wildfire that destroyed more than 9,000 structures and killed 18 people may have carried toxins, including lead, asbestos and heavy metals, into their homes. But they struggled to convince their insurers to test their properties to ensure it was safe to return. (Lauer and Ho, 4/11)