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Mississippi’s only burn center will close Oct. 14, hospital officials said Thursday. The JMS Burn and Reconstruction Center, located at Merit Health Central in South Jackson, includes 13 burn intensive care patient rooms, 20 burn step down unit patient rooms and a 12-room outpatient clinic. The center cares for both adult and pediatric burn patients on an inpatient and outpatient basis. ... “The COVID-19 pandemic and the challenging staffing and recruitment environment have made it increasingly difficult for us to recruit the breadth of specialists needed to maintain the burn program, which is the primary reason why we’ve made the difficult decision to close.” (9/8)

Workers at four Pennsylvania nursing homes reached a tentative contract agreement Thursday, nearly a week after going on strike over pay and staffing, the workers’ union said. Terms of the deal with Comprehensive Healthcare were not disclosed pending a ratification vote. Workers could be back on the job as early as Saturday, according to SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania. (9/8)

This fall, the University of Maryland Medical System in Baltimore plans to welcome its first full class of nursing students for a program that puts them at patients' bedside for one 12-hour shift per week. (Carbajal, 9/8)

Nursing homes and debt collectors are flouting a law that prohibits them from requiring friends and family of care home residents to shoulder the costs of the facilities, according to a federal report issued Thursday. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said friends and family members have had to declare bankruptcy, had their wages garnished and their homes repossessed after signing unenforceable contracts called “admission agreements” with nursing facilities. As a result, they have been held liable as third parties for their loved ones’ nursing home stays. (Hussein, 9/8)

KHN: Many Preventive Medical Services Cost Patients Nothing. Will A Texas Court Decision Change That?

A federal judge’s ruling in Texas has thrown into question whether millions of insured Americans will continue to receive some preventive medical services, such as cancer screenings and drugs that protect people from HIV infection, without making a copayment. It’s the latest legal battle over the Affordable Care Act, and Wednesday’s ruling is almost certain to be appealed. (Appleby, 9/9)

KHN: Hospitals Divert Primary Care Patients To Health Center ‘Look-Alikes’ To Boost Finances

A growing number of hospitals are outsourcing often-unprofitable outpatient services for their poorest patients by setting up independent, nonprofit organizations to provide primary care. Medicare and Medicaid pay these clinics, known as federally qualified health center look-alikes, significantly more than they would if the sites were owned by hospitals. (Galewitz, 9/9)

Morgan Health will invest $20 million in digital health firm LetsGetChecked, the companies announced Thursday. LetsGetChecked offers at-home to diagnostic and genetic testing, virtual appointments, and prescription drug delivery. (Berryman, 9/8)

Doctors at Johns Hopkins hospitals, surgery centers and community physicians’ offices soon may no longer accept insurance from one of the state’s dominant insurers, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, limiting access to or raising costs for some of the region’s most in-demand medical providers. (Cohn, 9/8)

A federal judge grilled the Justice Department on Thursday over its antitrust claims that UnitedHealth Group Inc.’s $13 billion acquisition of health-technology firm Change Healthcare Inc. would suppress competition and limit innovation in health insurance markets. During closing arguments, U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols questioned the department’s arguments that he should block the deal because it would limit competition for technology used in claims processing and would give UnitedHealth access to sensitive industry data that it could use to harm competitors. (Mulvaney, 9/8)

Federal officials found few instances of fraud in Medicare billing practices for telehealth services during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. There were 1,714 providers out of approximately 742,000 whose billing was deemed "high risk" for Medicare, according to a report released this month by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General. (Hudson, 9/8)

Healthcare leaders say it can cost more than $4 million for an organization to recover from a single cyberattack, according to a new survey. A poll of more than 600 healthcare information-technology and security professionals found 89% of organizations surveyed had experienced at least one cyberattack in the past year. Within that group, organizations on average had 43 attempted cyberattacks during that time period, according to the poll published Thursday by research firm Ponemon. (Kim Cohen, 9/8)