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Several family members of accused criminals who were held in jail after being ruled incompetent to stand trial are suing the state of California over lengthy delays in placing the defendants in state hospital beds. Felony defendants who a judge deems incompetent because of mental illness or developmental disabilities are supposed to go to a state hospital for treatment and training until they can understand the charges against them and help an attorney prepare a defense. (Sewell, 7/29)

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's administration has been working in recent weeks to come up with a new state funding arrangement that could help fend off possible strikes at unionized nursing homes across the state. Office of Policy and Management Secretary Ben Barnes said state officials have been meeting privately with union officials to find a way of fairly distributing $26 million in additional state and federal funds, in each of the next two years, to both union- and non-union homes. (Haigh, 7/29)

Kansas officials have decided against participating in the Excellence in Mental Health Act, a federal initiative that could have generated millions of dollars for behavioral health programs throughout the state. Instead, according to Angela de Rocha, a spokesperson for the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, KDADS and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment would prefer to “build upon the flexibility and innovative possibilities of KanCare” to work with community mental health centers and managed care organizations “to build capacity and improve outcomes in the behavioral health system.” (Ranney, 7/29)

New York City's Department of Health is investigating an outbreak in the Bronx of deadly Legionairre's disease, city officials said Wednesday. Since July 10, there have been 31 cases reported and two people have died from the ailment, caused by a bacteria known as Legionella, according to the city's Department of Health. Legionella often is traced to plumbing systems. (Eversley, 7/29)

A federal judge sentenced former Sacred Heart Hospital owner Edward Novak to 4 1/2 years in prison Wednesday for a massive kickback scheme the judge said callously treated elderly and impoverished patients like "commodities to be bought." "People have a right to expect that decisions about their health care are going to be based on need and not on whether there is money to be made," U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly said in imposing the prison sentence, fining Novak $770,000 and ordering him to pay a whopping $10.4 million in forfeiture. (Meisner, 7/29)

Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia, who runs the sprawling Cook County Jail here, has an indelible childhood memory of police officers pounding on the aluminum walls of the family’s double-wide trailer home in North Carolina, rifling through cupboards and drawers, and arresting her father on charges of selling marijuana. Dr. Jones Tapia, then 8, had to call her mother home from work. (Williams, 7/30)

New numbers compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show deaths from cancer are dropping around the South, along with the rest of the United States. For decades, cancer death rates climbed slowly until about 1990, when the trend started to turn around. Since that time, deaths from cancer have steadily decreased. Ruth Petersen, who leads cancer prevention efforts for the Department of Health and Human Services said the decrease is the result of a complicated group effort. (Hoban, 7/30)