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Mission Hospital risks losing Medicare and Medicaid funding because of deficiencies in care that were so severe, state inspectors concluded last month, that they “posed immediate jeopardy to patients’ health and safety,” Asheville Watchdog has learned. “Immediate jeopardy” is the most serious deficiency possible for a hospital. (Jones, 1/23)

A patient who came to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania-Cedar Avenue unable to move the thumb on their swollen, lacerated hand waited four days for doctors to splint the broken bone. ... State inspectors cited HUP-Cedar for an “unacceptable delay” in emergency care, noting it could have led to further injury and increased the patient’s risk of death in an inspection report released earlier this month. (Gantz, 1/22)

Intermountain Healthcare may shutter a network of clinics within weeks if no one steps up to take it over. Saltzer Health of Nampa, Idaho, will close March 29 absent a buyer, the provider announced in a news release Thursday. The multispecialty medical practice, which Intermountain acquired in 2020, has struggled to surmount financial challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, the news release said. (DeSilva, 1/22)

Hospital Sisters Health System is closing two hospitals in Western Wisconsin due to “prolonged operational and financial stress,” as well as other lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the system announced Monday. Prevea Health, a physician network that partners with the health system to provide primary and specialty care services, will also close its locations across Chippewa Valley. About 1,400 clinicians and support staff employed by Hospital Sisters Health System and Prevea Health will be affected by the closures. (Devereaux, 1/22)

A former nurse has filed an antitrust class action lawsuit against UPMC that she hopes will ultimately include all the health system's nurses. The accusation is straightforward: by acquiring 28 health care systems over at least two decades, UPMC has become a monopoly, eliminating competition so they can dictate wage scales and cut health care services. "UPMC has a monopoly in western Pennsylvania, where through their acquisitions, they control the market," said Daniel Levin, the attorney for former UPMC nurse Victoria Ross. (Delano, 1/22)

A lawsuit related to a wide-ranging healthcare data breach affecting nearly 9 million people last year has been filed against Bon Secours Mercy Health System and Perry Johnson & Associates, a third-party transcription services provider. The suit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Nevada, stems from a data breach that occurred between March and May 2023. (DeSilva, 1/22)

When Aidan Hettler showed up for a job interview at the Sedgwick County Health Center in the summer of 2022, he was prepared to tell the hospital’s board that he absolutely should not get the job. He had been talked into applying for the role by somebody at the hospital, despite having no health care experience to speak of — and he was just 22 years old. (Porter, 1/22)

Doctors often don’t have a lot of time to chat with patients during medical appointments — which means that conversations about nutrition can wind up taking a backseat to other concerns. But during a recent weeklong course at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, preventive cardiologist Stephen Devries enlisted two dozen students in the mission to integrate nutrition into clinical medicine — changing the way medicine is taught and health care is delivered in the process. (Cooney, 1/22)

Even AI optimists don't envision the technology fundamentally remaking the U.S. health care system anytime soon, but there's widespread agreement that it has the potential to vastly improve the quality of care and trim costly waste. The scale of change that AI could bring to health care not only impacts patients but also the millions of people the system employs — who will ultimately shape how widely it's adopted. (Owens, 1/22)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: What's Indoor Air Quality Like In Long-Term Care Facilities During Wildfires? Worse Than You'd Think

Every year, wildfires across the western U.S. and Canada send plumes of smoke into the sky. When that smoke blows into southwestern Idaho’s Treasure Valley, it blankets Boise-area residents in dirty air. They include seniors living in long-term care facilities, many of whom are considered an at-risk population for smoke exposure because of respiratory or cardiac diseases. (Mohr, 1/23)