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Medical advances are allowing surgeries that once required several days in the hospital to now offer one-day outpatient surgeries, including hip replacements. The Bedford Ambulatory Surgical Center touts quick, safe and less expensive hip-replacement surgeries, with doctors there expecting the amount of procedures to double this year. (Houghton, 6/19)

Vermont has become one of several states working to make sure vasectomies are among the birth control options couples can afford. Gov. Peter Shumlin last month signed into law a bill that adds vasectomies to the list of procedures that most health insurance coverage in Vermont must pay for. (Sananes, 6/18)

Every day, sheriff’s deputies and ambulance drivers transport Iowans hundreds of miles to find open psychiatric beds. Local hospitals could handle more of those emergency cases if they weren’t backed up with other patients overdue to be released. Hospital leaders say the bottleneck is worsening, and they blame it on a lack of options for patients who need supervision short of full hospitalization. (Leys, 6/19)

Most people with mental illness experience it first during those years. Indeed, the most critical time — and hardest time — to reach people who are vulnerable to severe mental illness is during their teen and early adult years. (Robertson, 6/17)

Home health providers in Texas will be the testing ground for a new initiative that Medicare says will help cut down on fraud in the $83 billion industry. The plan is to eliminate the “pay and chase” method that left the federal health insurer to investigate instances of fraud and abuse after claims were paid by Medicare. (Rice, 6/17)

Although many of the details surrounding Lee County’s plan to build a $50 million, 50-bed hospital on the property now occupied by Grand Island Golf Club are still unknown, it appears one of the parties involved is one of the nation’s foremost developers of medical and health care facilities. Henry Johnson, chief strategy officer of Marietta’s Freese Johnson LLC, confirmed Friday that his company “has been engaged” to build the new hospital. Johnson said that due to the many nuances of the project, and the fact that everything is still in the early stages, he could not share specific details about the county’s future hospital. (McEwen, 6/18)

After five years of quiet but rapid growth making equipment for the marijuana industry in other states, Apeks Supercritical is ready to ramp up business in Ohio. With passage of a state medical-marijuana law that takes effect Sept. 8, the company not only expects to see a jump in manufacturing orders, but it also plans to get into the business as a marijuana processor. (Johnson, 6/20)

They may be called “synthetic marijuana,” but the only thing synthetic cannabinoid products known by names such as “spice” and "K2" have with the active ingredients in real marijuana is that they bind to the same receptors in the brain. There are hundreds – if not thousands – of synthetic chemicals that are sold as legal highs around the U.S. The chemicals are sprayed on plant material and marked “not for human consumption” and “herbal increase.” But those who sell them and those who buy them know what they are for. (Campbell, 6/19)