With many hospital-owned physician practices exceeding federal guidelines for controlling a market, observers both inside and outside the industry may be asking why regulators aren’t blocking more of these mergers. That’s because the physician-fueled deals are too small to trigger notice by those charged with fighting monopolies.

The five-hospital MemorialCare Health System has announced a shuffle among its chief operating officers at its flagship Long Beach Memorial campus, with Ikenna Mmeje, MHSA, taking over as COO of Long Beach Memorial while his predecessor Tamra Kaplan, PharmD, will take the same role at the hospital’s Miller Children’s and Women’s Hospital Long Beach.

Beaumont Baptist Hospital, located about 85 miles away from Houston, was one of a few facilities in the region that decided to evacuate patients due to Hurricane Harvey. But moving 243 injured and ill patients—including one with a broken pelvis—isn’t so easy, as the New York Times chronicled.

In the first of series of hearings aimed at building consensus on a plan to stabilize the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplace, state insurance commissioners asked for lawmakers to pass a multi-year extension of the ACA’s payments to insurers.

The Patient Safety Act received certification today from the Massachusetts Attorney General's office. The Patient Safety Act will dramatically improve patient safety in Massachusetts hospitals by setting a safe maximum limit on the number of patients assigned to a nurse at one time, while providing flexibility to hospitals to adjust nurses' patient assignments based on specific patient needs. Currently there are no requirements for hospitals to provide an adequate level of nursing care in such areas as the emergency department, medical-surgical floors, maternity units or psychiatric units.

St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma, Washington, has been sued by the state’s attorney general for allegedly instructing employees not to mention the availability of charity care to patients, even when they were “obviously low-income or homeless.”

Much of the September issue of Health Affairs deals with the increasing consolidation of healthcare organizations. To maintain competition, regulators need to do more than rely on antitrust enforcement.

The move by the administration of President Donald Trump to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration policy in six months without congressional action was harshly criticized by major medical associations, which warned removing DACA protections could affect access to care in rural and underserved areas.