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Baystate Health, the dominant health care system in Western Massachusetts, plans to lay off about 300 people as it tries to close a $75 million budget shortfall spurred by shrinking federal payments, the nonprofit said Friday. In a memo to Baystate staff, chief executive Mark A. Keroack said the job cuts — about 2.5 percent of the company’s employees — could save Baystate about $20 million. ... The health system, which has an annual budget of just over $2 billion, said it would still face a budget gap of about $15 million after those layoffs and another $40 million in unspecified spending cuts. (Woodward, 8/12)

The Philadelphia Fire Department has long conducted medical exams for new hires and before promotions, but regular physicals have not been required for several decades, said deputy chief Ted Mueller, the department's health and safety officer. That was a cause for concern among management and labor alike, given the extreme physical demands of the work. In addition to sudden stresses placed on the heart, firefighters contend with all manner of unknowns, such as exposure to blood-borne pathogens and the inhalation of smoke and other airborne contaminants. (Avril, 8/15)

In June 2014, two executives from Steward Health Care System visited John Polanowicz, then the state’s health and human services secretary. They were far from strangers — Polanowicz had previously worked for Steward — and they chatted about golf and children, according to another person at the meeting. Then Polanowicz handed his visitors a draft of a new policy that would give Steward an avenue to open a heart center, sidestepping a statewide moratorium. This encounter has become a key element in a lawsuit brought by a Steward competitor against the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. In a recent sworn deposition, a former high-ranking health department employee who attended the meeting said Polanowicz told his guests he wanted to make sure the new policy gets “us what we want.” (Kowalczyk, 8/15)

Survivors of the Pulse nightclub shootings will have a little more leeway to qualify for a share of the millions of dollars raised by the OneOrlando Fund, its board of directors decided late Thursday. The move came after two town hall meetings a week ago in which some survivors testified they didn't seek medical attention within 24 hours — the limit initially proposed to qualify as injured in the shootings. Instead, some said they ran from the club in terror, drove home and didn't venture outside for days. (Santich, 8/12)

(Kathleen) White, 65, was one of five patients who had surgery at Cataract & Laser Center West in West Springfield on a May morning in 2014, only to discover the next day that the patients could not see out of the eye that had been operated on. The injuries have shocked and mystified cataract surgeons, who say even one serious injury is rare, and led specialists who examined the patients to conclude that the anesthesiologist on the cases, Dr. Tzay Chiu, possibly pierced their eyeballs or retinas with his needles, according to the surgery center’s investigative reports submitted to the state. Chiu’s attorney, Rebecca Capozzi in Waltham, declined to comment. (Kowalczyk, 8/14)

Change had already begun with a 2014 anti-shackling law that went into effect two weeks after [Autumn] Mason delivered her daughter. It made Minnesota the 20th state to outlaw the use of restraints during and just after childbirth. It also became the first state to guarantee offenders access to birth coaches, called doulas...Child welfare advocates say such steps are overdue in promoting healthy pregnancies and births, which save taxpayers money and build a foundation for babies who are innocent of their mother’s crimes. (Sawyer, 8/13)

As the state grows grayer, some needs become greater - and many experts, health officials and seniors themselves warn the Granite State is woefully underprepared to serve its silver citizens...For New Hampshire, the shift was sudden. During the 1970s, '80s and '90s, the state's population grew each decade by 20 percent or more, according to the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies. (Grosky, 8/13)

A 63-year-old woman who leapt to her death from the third-floor window of a building in downtown Nashua on July 27 had been discharged from the state's psychiatric hospital only hours earlier, according to an administrator at New Hampshire Hospital. The senior employee in administration, with first-hand knowledge of operating conditions at the hospital, agreed to be interviewed on the condition of anonymity, for fear of repercussions at work. (Solomon, 8/13)

Eight people face charges after authorities say they received $157 million in fraudulent insurance claims as part of a scheme involving prescription compounding pharmacies in Pasco County and the Miami area. Between Oct. 2012 and Dec. 2015 the suspects are accused of submitting $633 million in fraudulent reimbursement claims for prescription compounded medication to Medicare, Tricare and private insurance companies, authorities said. The prescriptions were generated through bribes, kickbacks and illegitimate provider/patient relationships, according to a release from the Department of Justice. (Ochoa, 8/14)

The number of Texans who exempt their children from vaccination for non-medical reasons rose nearly 9 percent last school year, continuing a now 12-year-long trend that public health officials worry could eventually leave communities vulnerable to outbreaks of preventable diseases.The new numbers represent a 19-fold increase since 2003, the first year that Texas law allowed parents to decline state immunization requirements for "reasons of conscience." (Ackerman, 8/14)

Swapping clean needles with drug injection users for used ones has been never a popular idea in Greater Cincinnati. Cincinnati Exchange Project (CEP) had a rough start after the idea was conceived in 2007, but finally opened in 2014. With a raging heroin epidemic, the program has expanded to four sites. Now, its project manager is facing a misdemeanor drug paraphernalia charge after Norwood Police found her sleeping in her SUV on Interstate 71 and seized an uncapped syringe, bottle cap and burnt cotton from her vehicle. Harrison, who has pleaded not guilty, told police she works from her vehicle and was experiencing side effects of hypoglycemia, which she suffers from. (DeMio, 8/14)

In a 124-page ruling, a federal appeals court Thursday upheld the convictions of four former WellCare Health Plans executives in a case that stemmed from allegations of defrauding Florida's Medicaid program. A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld convictions against former WellCare CEO and President Todd Farha; former Chief Financial Officer Paul Behrens; former Vice President of Clinical Services William Kale; and former Vice President of Medical Economics Peter Clay. (8/12)

A quest by a Des Moines hospital to find a nursing home in Iowa willing to take a stroke victim who also happened to be transgender and bipolar took four and a half months. After a wide search and several evaluations, LeQuan Edwards, 52, landed at the Norwalk Rehabilitation Center, where staffers have been trained to work with transgender people. (Rood, 8/12)

Megan Mehta loves her heart doctor, but said he's so busy that he's sometimes hours late for her appointments. And Sina Sulunga-Kahaialii thinks there's got to be an easier way for kidney patients to get a home dialysis machine that matches the height of their beds. These aren't frustrated adults talking. They're patients at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital who are waiting for or have recently received life-saving organ transplants. And this weekend, after putting their heads together at a workshop at the Ronald McDonald House at Stanford, where two of them are living, they came up with some practical solutions to a few health care challenges that they -- and many of the rest of us -- have confronted. (Seipel, 8/14)

In the years before Sacred Heart Hospital abruptly closed, a series of elderly nursing home patients were taken to the struggling West Side medical facility, where they were whisked directly into a room to be examined and tested... Since Sacred Heart closed in July 2013, one of the real motivations for funneling patients to the hospital has become clear: a cadre of administrators and doctors were involved in an elaborate kickback and bribery scheme. They benefited handsomely when patients were admitted to the hospital, billing Medicare and Medicaid for patient stays, according to federal prosecutors. (O'Connell, 8/12)

Health advocates have tapped the brakes on a proposal to expand the city of Austin’s smoking ban at bars and restaurants. The plan advanced by Central Health’s Health Equity Policy Council – a group of about 60 Austin-area residents, many of them health professionals – would have made it illegal to allow smoking and vaping on outdoor patios. Vaping would have also been banned inside bars and restaurants, where smoking has been prohibited for about a decade. The proposal would require approval by the Austin City Council before it could be enforced. (Dinges, 8/12)