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Many hospitals have struggled to offer safe and effective care in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic turned their operations upside down. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ 2024 hospital star ratings, released Wednesday, showed more hospitals than last year performed poorly. That may be, in part, because the data submitted by hospitals was from April 2019 through March 2023 and excluded facilities’ performance on quality metrics from the first half of 2020. (Devereaux, 8/1)

Medicare reimbursements for inpatient hospital care will increase 2.9% in fiscal 2025 under a final rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued Thursday. The agency offered hospitals a larger pay hike than the 2.6% it proposed in April, which the industry decried as insufficient. The regulation also includes additional provisions such as higher graduate medical education funding and an initiative to improve drug supplies at small hospitals. (Kacik, 8/1)

San Francisco’s largest skilled nursing facility, Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center, will begin readmitting former residents it was forced to move out over the past two years while it underwent a grueling process to regain federal certification to care for patients. At least 10 former residents are slated to return in the coming weeks, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health, which oversees the public hospital. This week, one new resident moved in. (Ho, 8/1)

Gov. Maura Healey said Thursday she is pressing Steward Health Care to adhere to a state Department of Public Health regulation that hospital owners must give 120 days notice before any medical facility can close in Massachusetts. Healey made the comment a day after a bankruptcy judge allowed Steward’s decision to close two Massachusetts hospitals. Steward announced July 26 its plan to close the hospitals — Carney Hospital and Nashoba Valley Medical Center — on or around Aug. 31 because it had received no qualified bids for either facility. (Leblanc, 8/1)

Jefferson Health and Lehigh Valley Health Network completed a merger Thursday that creates a $15 billion nonprofit health system serving Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Jefferson Health CEO Dr. Joseph Cacchione, who is leading the new enterprise, said the provider has its sights set on integrating the organization's 32 hospitals and more than 700 locations over the next few years. The company will operate under the Jefferson Health brand. (Hudson, 8/1)

Hundreds of UC healthcare and campus service workers converged in front of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center to picket during their lunch break Wednesday, demanding higher wages and investment in affordable housing solutions. The informational picket was one of five across the UC campuses organized by AFSCME Local 3299, which represents more than 30,000 workers, who are among the lowest-paid in the UC system. (Roseborough, 8/1)

Contract disputes between hospitals and health plans have become routine, but they tend to be local, affecting a handful of hospitals and the people in the surrounding communities. This latest one is different. It involves the country’s biggest private health insurer, UnitedHealthcare, and its biggest hospital chain, HCA Healthcare. (Bannow, 8/2)

Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News: Urgent Care Or ER? With ‘One-Stop Shop,’ Hospitals Offer Both Under Same Roof

Facing an ultracompetitive market in one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities, UF Health is trying a new way to attract patients: a combination emergency room and urgent care center. In the past year and a half, UF Health and a private equity-backed company, Intuitive Health, have opened three centers that offer both types of care 24/7 so patients don’t have to decide which facility they need. (Galewitz, 8/2)