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After weeks of contract negotiations that threatened to disrupt medical care for tens of thousands of Californians, UC Health and Blue Shield of California on Tuesday reached a new agreement. The deal means patients who get medical care at UCSF and five other UC Health academic medical centers statewide through Blue Shield can continue accessing services at in-network rates. This had been up in the air, with the previous contract slated to expire Aug. 9. If the two sides had not reached an agreement, patients would potentially have had to find a new doctor, new insurer, or pay out-of-network rates. (Ho, 7/8)

Health care workers in Stillwater, Minnesota, kicked off a four-day unfair labor practice strike Monday. Over 80 workers across multiple departments of the HealthPartners Stillwater Medical Group are represented by SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa. Ninety-nine percent of the workers voted to strike if a deal could not be reached. Workers began a picket in front of the HealthPartners Clinic Stillwater facility in the morning and held a rally at noon. (Premo, 7/8)

ChristianaCare and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia plan to partner to improve care for pediatric patients in four states by spring 2026, the providers announced Tuesday. The partnership will be co-branded and is not a joint venture, with each organization remaining independent, according to Dr. Kert Anzilotti, chief medical officer and president of the Medical Group of ChristianaCare. (DeSilva, 7/8)

Northwestern Memorial Hospital is hoping to build a new tower on its Streeterville campus with more than 200 beds to better meet demand, according to an application filed with the state. (Schencker, 7/8)

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital’s fundraising organization, ALSAC, promoted Ike Anand Tuesday to become its new president and chief executive officer. The leadership change comes as ALSAC -- which raised more than $2.5 billion for the Memphis-based hospital in 2024, according to tax filings – navigates a global expansion and an increasingly complicated funding landscape in the United States. (Gamboa, 7/8)

Samsung plans to acquire health data company Xealth, the companies said Tuesday. The deal would allow the South Korean-based electronics giant to bolster its presence in U.S. hospitals. Xealth, which is financially backed by several health systems and spun out of the Renton, Washington-based Providence health system, has developed a platform that integrates clinical data from dozens of digital health vendors. (Perna, 7/8)

A New York judge has ordered CVS Health's Omnicare subsidiary to pay $948.8 million in fees and damages as part of a False Claims Act whistleblower case. In April, a federal jury determined that Omnicare submitted more than 3.3 million fraudulent claims for prescriptions between 2010 and 2018, which led to $135.6 million in overpayments from the government. (Minemyer, 7/8)

The Cleveland Clinic Medicare Accountable Care Organization is piloting a a three-year program aimed at reducing the overall healthcare costs of dementia patients. The pilot, announced Tuesday with virtual dementia care provider Remo Health, offers 24/7 support, education and wraparound services to dementia patients and their caregivers in Ohio. (Eastabrook, 7/8)

Nearly all states saw declines in the number of acute care hospitals offering obstetric services between 2010 through 2022, with seven states seeing a quarter or more of their hospitals dropping obstetric care, according to new analysis. The shutdowns were spread across urban and rural hospitals alike, but more pronounced in the latter. Twelve states lost obstetric services among a quarter or more of their hospitals, and by 2022, there were eight states in which more than two-thirds of all rural hospitals did not offer obstetric care, researchers found. (Muoio, 7/8)

Alignment Healthcare will get a boost to its Medicare Advantage star ratings after a federal court decided the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services erred in its assessment of the company’s quality performance. The health insurer sued CMS in January, alleging a flawed methodology resulted in a Medicare Advantage HMO in Arizona being rated 3.5 stars out of five instead of four. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled partly in the company’s favor on June 9, Alignment Healthcare announced in a news release Tuesday. (Tepper, 7/8)

Health Care Service Corp. has come up with a name for the suite of Medicare offerings it acquired from Cigna — HealthSpring. The Blue Cross and Blue Shield licensee, which purchased Cigna’s Medicare business for $3.3 billion in March, is set to start offering insurance products later this year pending regulatory approval, according to a Tuesday news release. (DeSilva, 7/8)

Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News: Insurers Fight State Laws Restricting Surprise Ambulance Bills

Nicole Silva’s 4-year-old daughter was headed to a relative’s house near the southern Colorado town of La Jara when a vehicle T-boned the car she was riding in. A cascade of ambulance rides ensued — a ground ambulance to a local hospital, an air ambulance to Denver, and another ground ambulance to Children’s Hospital Colorado. Silva’s daughter was on Medicaid, which was supposed to cover the cost of the ambulances. But one of the three ambulance companies, Northglenn Ambulance, a public company since acquired by a private one, sent Silva’s bill to a debt collector. (Bichell and Houghton, 7/9)