�鶹Ů��

Atlanta’s biggest health contract dispute in years is over. Grady Health System and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia announced Monday that they have agreed to a new contract effective April 1. (Miller, 3/30)

Nebraska this month became the 20th state to approve a law allowing nurse practitioners to treat patients without the supervision of a doctor, a move that supporters say is gaining traction as state legislators work to find more providers to care for the newly insured under the 2010 health care law. Under the bill signed by Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts on March 5, nurse practitioners starting in September will not have to work with a physician to diagnose and treat patients. They currently are required to get a signature from a doctor before treating a patient. (Evans, 3/30)

The governor’s proposal would cut $25.5 million in grant funds that mental health and substance abuse treatment providers have long used to help offset the cost of caring for uninsured and underinsured patients. And providers say the cut could have dramatic and damaging effects on the mental health treatment system in the state. (Levin Becker, 3/31)

State contracting scandal that dealt Republican Gov. Greg Abbott the first crisis of his administration escalated Monday with a scathing state report about Texas' health commissioner, who responded by giving no indication he would resign. An outside investigation ordered by Abbott did not explicitly call for the removal of Health and Human Services Commissioner Kyle Janek, who was appointed by former Gov. Rick Perry in 2012 and makes $260,000 a year. But a two-month review of a $110 million no-bid contract awarded last year — which public corruption prosecutors in Austin are also now investigating — concluded that failures by Janek helped create an environment in the 56,000-person commission that enabled the deal. (Weber, 3/30)

Without the medicine Rachelle Crow takes for her rheumatoid arthritis, the 29-year-old Michigan woman’s face would frequently feel as if it were engulfed in flames. She would barely be able to crawl out of bed. She would have trouble opening or closing her fists or lifting her 3-year-old daughter. Crow can do all those things thanks to Cimzia, one of a highly complex, usually expensive class of drugs known as biologics that derive from living organisms. (Ollove, 3/30)

Three or four months from now, the National Alliance on Mental Illness office in Kansas may be closed. “The future is uncertain,” said Rick Cagan, the office’s executive director. It’s uncertain because most of the office’s funding has long been tied to a $150,000 grant from the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services. Earlier this year, KDADS officials announced they had decided not to renew the grant as part of an effort to better coordinate efforts to promote behavioral health and substance abuse treatment, reduce problem gambling and prevent suicide. (Ranney, 3/30)

State Rep. Dave Heaton can't sleep. The Mount Pleasant Republican is awake in knots many nights, thinking about a proposal that would close two mental health institutes in rural Iowa. Gov. Terry Branstad, also a Republican, recently decided to close two mental health institutes in Mount Pleasant and Clarinda, which serve rural Iowa. Now, Heaton is facing a race against the clock to try to pass legislation that would slow down the closures. (Pfannenstiel, 3/29)

More patients across the country may have been infected by medical scopes manufactured by Olympus Corp. than previously thought, health officials warned Monday. Olympus' scopes are at the center of a string of recent endoscope-related superbug outbreaks that include Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and Cedars Sinai Medical Center, as well as an earlier case at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle. (Peterson, 3/30)

Jeanni McCarty, a nurse and native of this threadbare city of 4,200, hurried up and down [Austin, Ind.'s] Main Street in Saturday’s bright sun, handing out stacks of fliers to any business that would take them. They were announcing a hastily planned specialty clinic — FREE, they emphasized in red — that would provide H.I.V. treatment to anyone who needed it. Quite suddenly, a lot of people around here do. And the number keeps growing. (Goodnough, 3/30)