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A Senate panel Wednesday unanimously approved a bill that would create a pilot needle-exchange program in Miami-Dade County to try to stem the spread of HIV and other infectious diseases. The Senate Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee supported the measure (SB 242), filed by Sen. Oscar Braynon, D-Miami Gardens. Under the proposal, the University of Miami and its affiliates would run a program allowing intravenous drug users to exchange used needles and syringes for clean needles and syringes. (11/19)

Regional health system Avera Health announced Thursday that it plans to buy the Dakotacare health insurance company, creating what it said would be the second-largest health insurer in South Dakota. The two Sioux Falls-based companies said customers wouldn't experience any change in service or access to hospitals, pharmacies or doctors. Avera said the deal allows it to expand its insurance to cover not only its facilities, but to offer choice-base plans, which allow patients to choose any heath care provider in the state. (Lammers, 11/19)

A whistleblower lawsuit accusing Illinois home healthcare company Home Bound Healthcare Inc of Medicare fraud can move forward, a federal judge has ruled. Ruling Tuesday on a motion to dismiss, U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin of the Northern District of Illinois allowed federal whistleblower claims to proceed, though he threw out similar state law claims, as well as those alleging violations of federal anti-kickback law. (Pierson, 11/19)

Conflicts between clinicians and patients and their family members have leapt onto the radar of health care administrators and policy makers this year. That’s partly the result of a traumatic episode in January in which a beloved Boston cardiac surgeon was killed by the son of a deceased patient. But it’s also because patient-on-clinician violence is on the rise, according to federal statistics. (Tedeschi, 11/19)

A controversial perk that guaranteed lifetime health care benefits to a select group of Wayne County retirees is being altered, and not to the administration's liking, according to the Wayne County Commission. The perk, known as Amann benefits, provides lifetime health care benefits for a group of employees who were appointed by former Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano. (Lawrence, 11/20)

Last month the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recognized Kansas City for its efforts to improve public health with its Culture of Health prize. Now a newly released report by the Big Cities Health Coalition comparing health outcomes in the country’s 26 biggest cities offers a boatload of data suggesting Kansas City has made strides in many areas but lags in others. (Margolies, 11/19)

A Kansas City Council committee on Wednesday approved three anti-smoking measures that critics said wrongly include electronic cigarettes and premium cigars. Taken together, the three ordinances would raise the legal age for purchasing tobacco products and e-cigarettes in Kansas City, Mo., from 18 to 21 and add e-cigarettes, also known as vapes, to the city’s ban on indoor smoking, including in so-called vape shops that sell them. (Sherry, 11/19)

As of January, it will be illegal for minors to possess electronic cigarette products, and vaping largely will be subject to restrictions imposed in the [Washington] state’s decade-old ban on smoking in public places. In a Wednesday meeting that included more than an hour of public testimony on the subject, the Tacoma-Pierce County Board of Health voted 5-0 to give Pierce County new restrictions on e-cigarette use in public places, including requiring vapor stores to buy permits to operate. (Nunnally, 11/18)

Two organizations are demanding an investigation into what they say are unethical clinical trials that have required medical residents around the country, including those at the Medical College of Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, to work up to 28 hours or more at a time. The groups claim the trials have exposed the residents to sleep deprivation, depression and the risk of motor vehicle accidents, needle stick injuries and exposure to blood-borne pathogens while subjecting their patients to increased risk of medical errors, including potentially fatal ones. (Fauber, 11/19)

Thousands of people who are hospitalized with mental illness in the Philadelphia region will soon experience what has long been the reality for everyone else: living smoke-free. All psychiatric hospitals that have contracts with the city must ban all forms of tobacco, inside and outdoors, among patients and staff, on Dec. 14. All but one is including visitors in the policy, as well. The conventional wisdom is that banning smoking could make matters worse by, among other things, aggravating behavioral problems. (Sapatkin, 11/18)

Pennsylvania leads the nation - and New Jersey is fourth - in drug overdose deaths among young adult men, according to a new analysis, raising the level of urgency about an epidemic that over the last decade has killed more than twice as many Americans as homicide. Bucks and Gloucester Counties led their respective states in overdose fatality rates among males ages 19 to 25 - each of them nearly three times Philadelphia's rate. In the eight-county region, more than 100 young men a year are dying from overdoses of both illicit and legal drugs. (Sapatkin, 11/20)

The Nevada Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a Reno hospital must keep a 20-year-old comatose college student on life-support, pending a review of the legality of a medical standard used to determine she was brain dead. The unanimous ruling granting an appeal by Aden Hailu's father returned the case to Washoe County District Court for hearings about whether American Association of Neurology brain death guidelines cited by Saint Mary's Regional Medical Center doctors conform to Nevada's Determination of Death Act. (Ritter and Sonner, 11/20)

A woman with late-stage lung cancer could get medical marijuana in Maine if New Hampshire health officials issue her an identification card saying she's eligible before the state opens its own dispensaries, her lawyer said Thursday in court documents. Linda Horan wants a judge to order the state to grant her a medical marijuana ID card now so she can buy marijuana legally in Maine. Lawyers for the state argue that would undermine New Hampshire's need to control distribution. (11/19)