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Fort Worth’s Texas Christian University is one of nineteen organizations in the state that will receive federal funding to bolster training for health care professionals. More than $9.5 million in grants will be distributed to 19 hospitals, health systems and other groups statewide. The awards announced Thursday are meant to help improve access to care in high-need areas, and are part of $149 million national effort of the Health Resources and Services Administration. (Rice, 7/21)

When the 10-bed mental health crisis unit at New Hampshire Hospital opened on July 5 with much fanfare after a one-year delay, state health and human services officials predicted it would fill up immediately, given the long list of patients waiting in emergency rooms at hospitals throughout the state. Two beds were immediately occupied the day the Inpatient Stabilization Unit opened, according to Health and Human Services spokesperson Jake Leon, who predicted at the time that all 10 beds would soon be occupied. (Solomon, 7/21)

Across the United States, 76 rural hospitals have closed since 2010, three of them in North Carolina. A new report by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured attributes rural hospital closings to a broad range of factors. They include, but aren’t limited to, corporate decisions on profitability, lack of community expertise in dealing with large health-care organizations, changes in federal reimbursement policies, and some states’ decision not to expand Medicaid. (Goldsmith, 7/22)