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[Steven] Horvitz, the Russells' family doctor, has signed up with R-Health, an Elkins Park company that has a contract to provide what is called direct primary care to beneficiaries of the New Jersey State Health Benefits Program and School Employees’ Health Benefits Program. Under the three-year pilot, which started last month when R-Health's contract took effect, as many as 60,000 teachers, police, firefighters, and other state and local government employees will be allowed into the program. It's a free add-on to their current plans and is designed to give doctors more time to spend with patients, with the goal of reducing long-term spending on health care. (Brubaker, 12/ 20)

The chairwomen of the state House and Senate health committees joined Tuesday to announce legislation aimed at providing basic dental care to hundreds of thousands of children and elderly Georgians who have limited access to a dentist. (Salzer, 12/20)

A South Georgia elementary school has three dental chairs set up for kids who don’t have a regular dentist. But those chairs at Turner County Elementary School in Ashburn have sat vacant for the past three years, even though many kids there need dental care, says Brenda Lee of Family Connection of Turner County. That’s because Georgia doesn’t allow dental hygienists to practice in such a setting without a dentist present in the building. (Miller, 12/20)

Kids First Health Care is a nonprofit medical provider for people from birth to 20-years-old who otherwise could not afford health care. It opened in 1978 at 4675 E. 69th Ave. in Commerce City as a school-based clinic for the old Adams City High School campus. Now, that site is the nonprofit’s year round headquarters. In nearly 40 years, Kids First has opened four clinics in schools in the Adams 14 School District — Kearney Middle School, Lester Arnold High School, Adams City Middle School and inside the new Adams City High School. There’s also one in Westminster at the Gregory Hill Early Childhood Center. (Mitchell, 12/20)

Hundreds of Minnesota children who have suffered the trauma of being removed from their birth parents, and are now living in foster care, could soon receive state-funded intensive psychotherapy services to give them safer, more stable lives. Minnesota officials hope the mental health services, rolled out at a time of soaring foster care caseloads, will cut the persistently high number of children who cycle in and out of foster care placements without finding safe and permanent homes. (Serres, 12/21)

A three-judge appeals court panel on Tuesday heard arguments connected to a lawsuit filed in 2009 by the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City. The lawsuit charged that HCA had failed to live up to agreements forged when the for-profit hospital company bought the nonprofit Health Midwest hospitals in 2003. (Stafford, 12/20)

A month after California voted to approve Proposition 64 and legalize recreational marijuana, law enforcement officials throughout the state are prepping for what many view as the obvious: a jump in the number of people driving under the influence of pot. (Puente, 12/20)

An Alabama inmate found dead in his cell apparently killed himself just weeks after testifying in a trial accusing the state of denying proper mental health care to prisoners, officials said Tuesday. The Department of Corrections said Jamie Wallace, 24, was found dead in an apparent suicide five days earlier. He was found hanged in his cell at the Bullock County prison, about 45 miles southeast of Montgomery. (12/20)

The owner of a medical imaging company allegedly defrauded Medicare and Medicaid of more than $1.5 million, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in Topeka. Cody Lee West, 38, did business as C&S Imaging Inc., a mobile diagnostic testing facility based in Paragould, Arkansas. The facility provided ultrasound services to chiropractors and other medical providers in Kansas. According to the complaint, West told chiropractors he would provide them with ultrasound equipment and a technician at no charge. The chiropractors would bill for the services. (Margolies, 12/20)