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Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration has reached a tentative deal with a key employee union that would require state engineers to contribute toward their retirement health care benefits, likely establishing a template that will be applied to other state employee unions to help reduce a growing financial liability. Under the three-year agreement, which still must be ratified by the union’s members and the Democratic-dominated Legislature, the Professional Engineers in California Government in mid-2017 would have to begin paying one-half of 1 percent of their pre-tax salaries into a fund to chip away at the fiscal millstone. (Cadelago and Ortiz, 9/2)

Up until now, Northside Hospital has stayed relatively quiet in the almost frantic rush by metro Atlanta hospital systems to seek mergers or acquisitions. But Northside is now jumping into the fray, with a Wednesday announcement that it and Gwinnett Medical Center will begin talks to merge operations.(Miller, 9/2)

If the Ohio Supreme Court upholds a decision that exempted some of a patient’s medical records from his daughters’ request, hospitals could hide critical details about the care of those who are harmed or die there, say the plaintiffs of a case heard this morning. The lawsuit arose in Canton, where Howard E. Griffith died in 2012 at Aultman Hospital. Griffith’s heart monitor somehow was ripped off and he spent 40 minutes alone before he was found unresponsive, according to court records. He died two days later in intensive care. (Crane, 9/2)

While critics have appropriately pushed back citing the high cost, ineffectiveness, and impracticality of mass deportation, there is another consequence that has been largely overlooked, which is the grave impact that kicking millions of people out of the country would have on the health of those directly affected, on their families, on their communities, and on the overall health of our country. There are an estimated 160,000 undocumented persons in Pennsylvania and another 550,000 in New Jersey (2010 estimates) whose health could be directly placed at risk under a mass deportation policy. It is this concern about the health consequences of deportation that led the American College of Physicians, my employer, to urge physicians to speak out, individually and collectively, against mass deportation, reaffirming a position that it first adopted in 2011. ACP, based in Philadelphia, is the nations’ largest physician specialty society and second largest physician membership organization, representing 143,000 internal medicine physician and medical student members. (Doherty, 9/2)

The study said that instead of raising taxes, officials need to reduce spending growth in education, corrections, personnel and welfare, particularly Medicaid. The study also called for removing regulatory and workforce barriers to economic growth. (Chase, 9/2)

A Minnesota medical cannabis manufacturer won't open its third dispensary site until patient demand catches up with supply. Minnesota Medical Solutions was set to open a Moorhead location this fall, but CEO Kyle Kingsley said it will have to wait until next spring or summer. (Feshir, 9/2)

Some were students who had tried drugs or alcohol, but didn't have substance abuse problems. Others were young addicts in need of help. Neither group necessarily fared well under counseling programs run by a Long Beach company for Los Angeles County schools, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. Dabblers were dubbed abusers, and hard-core users didn't always get the care they needed. (Melley, 9/2)

A long-awaited Nebraska nursing home on the border with South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation will begin accepting Native American residents early next year to ease a severe care shortage in one of the nation's poorest regions, a project official said Wednesday. The facility is under construction on a 600-acre patch of tribal land in Whiteclay, a tiny Nebraska village on the South Dakota border that is known for selling millions of cans of beer each year to residents of the neighboring dry reservation. (Schulte, 9/2)

The mother arrived at the hospital last week in need of an emergency caesarean section, saying she had crossed the border to run an errand in town, not so her baby would be born an American citizen. She assured the doctor that she arrived at the hospital just "because [she] was here." Dr. Rolando Guerrero listened skeptically. "They always have a story," he said after delivering her 8-pound boy, Dylan. (Hennessy-Fiske, 9/3)

The man charged in a California kidnapping that police initially dismissed as a hoax said he acted alone, and that mental illness and a side effect from a vaccine contributed to his behavior, the FBI said in a court filing. (Thanawala, 9/2)