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The Federal Trade Commission and a cadre of prominent health economists are urging Tennessee officials to reject a potential merger between Mountain States Health Alliance and Wellmont Health System. The move comes a little more than a month after the FTC made its own plea to Virginia regulators. Mountain States and Wellmont, both headquartered in Tennessee, have been trying to combine their competing hospital systems for the past 18 months. The two not-for-profits own 19 hospitals in Virginia and Tennessee. A merged system would have about $2 billion of revenue. Mountain States and Wellmont have submitted applications for a certificate of public advantage (COPA) in Tennessee and Virginia, which would essentially allow them to skirt federal antitrust scrutiny in favor of state oversight. (Dickson, 11/26)

Most cancer patients going through treatment struggle with pain, fevers and nausea, sometimes severe enough to send them to the emergency room. But the chaos of the emergency room and related stress are "an assault on your well-being," said Richard Dean, who took his wife many times while she was battling ovarian cancer six years ago. He told Johns Hopkins Hospital officials they needed an urgent care center especially for cancer patients...Hopkins listened and, using some patient data crunching from Dean, who teaches engineering at Morgan State University, launched a cancer urgent care center in 2014 in space adjacent to where chemotherapy is delivered. The Hopkins center is open 12 hours a day during the week and plans to open on Saturdays starting in March. (Cohn, 11/25)

Five years ago, if a cancer patient at Cooper University Health Care in Camden, N.J., had a complex case, the attending oncologist would review the medical literature and call colleagues to solicit input on the best course of treatment. Now physicians can present challenging cases to a tumor board made up of experts in that particular form of cancer who come from Cooper and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, one of the nation's top-ranked academic oncology centers. The two institutions formed the partnership in 2013. “It's a very easy dialogue because we have this relationship,” said Dr. Generosa Grana, director of the MD Anderson Cancer Center at Cooper. Cooper is among the growing number of hospital systems that are joining forces with renowned National Cancer Institute-designated centers such as MD Anderson based in Houston or Dana-Farber in Boston. (Whitman, 11/26)

Massachusetts General, Brigham and Women’s, and UMass Memorial were among 17 hospitals inspected last December by the FDA. Regulators were concerned about infections possibly linked to contaminated instruments called duodenoscopes, used to examine the small intestine, and about the spread of uterine cancer when a surgical device called a power morcellator, which cuts up tissue, is used. Last month, the agency disclosed the inspection reports, showing that 15 of the 17 medical centers were either late in reporting cases in which patients were harmed by various devices or failed to report at all. (Kowalczyk, 11/27)

Boston Children’s Hospital is teaming up with General Electric Co. to produce software that will help doctors more accurately interpret brain scans of young patients. Under a deal set to be announced Monday, Children’s and Boston-based GE’s health care division will develop the system over the next 18 months, then market it to hospitals around the world. (Dayal McCluskey, 11/28)

Cherry Hill was still called Delaware Township when plans for a "complete modern general hospital" at Chapel Avenue and Cooper Landing Road were announced in the late 1950s. Long since acquired and expanded by Kennedy Health, the community hospital that opened in 1961 is being transformed by a $250 million construction project and a pending merger with Philadelphia's Jefferson Health. "There will be a total rebranding of this campus," says Joseph W. Devine, president and CEO of Kennedy Health. (Riordan, 11/27)