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Top Colorado lawmakers on Thursday announced a major agreement to avert potentially catastrophic cuts to the state’s hospitals, capping off weeks of tense negotiation on the far-reaching package. The measure would reverse a planned $528 million cut to hospitals, while boosting funding to roads and schools. It also would provide a tax break to small businesses, hike recreational marijuana taxes, increase Medicaid co-pays and lower the state’s spending cap by $200 million. (Eason and Frank, 5/4)

Looking for the best place to begin your career in the health care industry? A new study suggests that you should think twice before heading to Georgia, because it has been named one of the worst states for nurses by WalletHub. (Parker, 5/4)

Florida's universities call it a troubling trend. The need for mental health counseling services among students has gone up nearly 50 percent over the past five years. Almost 25,000 students sought mental health services last year, but on some campuses, they may have to wait weeks for help.  There just aren't enough counselors to go around. (Miller, 5/4)

Look up right now and you might see one of the 36 pink billboards dotting Texas cities urging women to go to the state for their reproductive health needs. But marketing the Healthy Texas Women Program isn’t the average public health outreach campaign — it’s a test for Texas legislators. The program marks the state’s second attempt at reimagining how to provide reproductive health and family planning services for low-income women without the involvement of Planned Parenthood or other abortion providers. Some critics say not enough women are aware of the program. (Evans, 5/5)

Sen. Carla Nelson, R-Rochester, introduced a bill that would raise the minimum age to buy tobacco products statewide from 18 to 21... The bill comes just days after the Edina City Council made that city the first in Minnesota to raise its tobacco sales age to 21. (Otárola, 5/4)

Doctors and nurses are obviously essential to any primary care medical team. But when it comes to managing a chronic health condition, a social worker could be the most valuable player from the patient’s perspective. That’s what some Medicare patients in and around the small northwest Kansas town of Plainville have been discovering since January of last year. That’s when the town’s primary care clinic, Post Rock Family Medicine, hired Christy Kaufman to provide care management. She works with patients who need the most help with multiple chronic health conditions. They often struggle — for various reasons — to comply with doctor’s orders. (Thompson, 5/4)

MedStar Health, which treated [Jackie] Dressel, is launching a program aimed at patients like her who have a family history of a specific cancer, mutant genes linked to one or more types of cancer, or other factors that could make them more likely to develop tumors. A team that includes specialists and genetic counselors will assess patients' need to be screened for cancer-related genes, develop treatment plans that consider current and future risk, and encourage regular diagnostic testing. (Cohn, 5/5)

Advocate Health Care, which operates 12 hospitals in Illinois, intends to reduce spending by $200 million, in part, because of delays in payments from the state of Illinois. CEO Jim Skogsbergh insisted the spending cuts were unrelated to its failed bid to merge with NorthShore University HealthSystem, Crain’s Chicago Business reported Thursday. (5/4)

Advocate Health Care, the state's largest hospital system, is making $200 million in cuts in response to financial pressures.The cuts will amount to about a 4 percent decrease in costs. The system is still evaluating exactly where those cuts will be made, Advocate spokeswoman Katie McDonough said, though a memo sent to employees Thursday said "some of our decisions will be difficult as they will undoubtedly impact programs, services and jobs." (Schencker, 5/4)

The University of Kansas Health System and a Tennessee-based for-profit hospital chain have agreed to rescue a troubled Topeka hospital despite possible changes in federal health policy that could hurt Kansas providers. Officials from the KU Health System and Ardent Health Services, the nation’s second-largest privately owned for-profit hospital chain, announced Thursday that they had signed a letter of intent to acquire St. Francis Health. (Mclean, 5/4)

Banner Health, Arizona's largest private employer, has completed an overhaul with changes to upper-management and cuts to nearly 1 percent of the health provider's positions, a top official said. The Phoenix-based health system's chief executive said the restructuring aims to reduce costs and respond to the health industry's changing financial picture, which includes tighter insurance reimbursement rates and pressure on consumers to pay a larger share of their own health bills. (Alltucker, 5/4)

A task force set up to recommend a replacement for the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division's aging psychiatric hospital agreed Thursday to consider a last-minute proposal from three Milwaukee health systems... The task force’s options previously had been limited to two for-profit, out-of-state companies, and it was scheduled to make its recommendation on Thursday. The Journal Sentinel first reported the local systems' plan to offer an alternative last week. (Boulton, 5/4)

Minnesota health officials reported seven new measles cases Thursday, bringing the case count to 41 in an outbreak that has now infected its first adult and has begun to spread beyond the state’s Somali ­community. It has also moved to a new part of the state. (Howatt, 5/4)

Supercomputer simulations that predicted the movements of a protein the size of 30 atoms allowed two biophysicists from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine to uncover important clues to understanding cancer. This research project, led by Matthias Buck, professor of physiology and biophysics at the school of medicine, showed how cell membranes control the shape and function of an important cancer-causing protein. (Washington, 5/4)

The more stress a pregnant woman feels about being able to afford to care for herself and her children, the more likely she is to give birth to a low birth weight baby, one of the leading causes of infant mortality. That's the finding of a study of more than 130 Columbus-area women by researchers at the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. (Zeltner, 5/5)

With one day left for the Florida Legislature to act, lawmakers say they are close to a deal on medical marijuana. On Thursday evening, the Senate passed sweeping legislation to implement a system that would allow patients with a wide array of conditions, including cancer, HIV/AIDS and post-traumatic stress disorder, to buy and use marijuana. (Auslen, 5/4)

Korova’s “20 dose” medical cannabis Black Bar chocolates are supercharged with 1,000 milligrams of THC, marijuana’s psychoactive ingredient, and the company’s new THC Blondie – a treat “packed with caramel chunks” and “covered in crushed pretzels” – has 10 50-milligram doses with a total punch of 500 milligrams. Now state Department of Public Health potency limit recommendations for medical marijuana edibles threaten to upset Korova’s marketing strategy and could force the company to dramatically cut THC levels in its chocolates, cookies, brownies and pot-infused popcorn sold through more than 750 marijuana dispensaries and delivery services in California. (Hecht, 5/4)

The Plain Dealer reached seven city and county health departments to ask whether they'd posted placards on properties included on a list the Ohio Department of Health recently released that the department says should all have received orders to vacate because owners haven't cleaned up identified hazards. Health departments also shared what, if anything, they and other area officials do to help renters forced to move from properties with unaddressed lead hazards. Each property should be vacant, but not all are. (Dissell, 5/5)