Shuttered Sharon Regional Medical Center Resuming Business Today
California-based Tenor Health Foundation has taken over the 163-bed hospital in Pennsylvania. More hospital news is about Anson General in Texas, Scripps Health in California, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Massachusetts. Also, chatbots feel the weight of heavy issues.
Modern Healthcare:
Sharon Regional Medical Center To Reopen Following Steward Sale
Sharon Regional Medical Center is set to reopen Tuesday, about two months after the former Steward Health Care facility in Pennsylvania closed. On Friday, the Pennsylvania Department of Health approved Pasadena, California-based Tenor Health Foundation’s plans to reopen the 163-bed hospital. In January, Judge Christopher Lopez of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston signed off on the hospital management company’s takeover of the facility, which employed more than 800 workers. (Kacik, 3/17)
Stat:
Plan To Save Rural Hospitals Is Underused, Comes With Complications
When Ted Matthews came out of retirement in early 2023 to retake the helm of the rural Texas hospital where he’d started his health care career, it was something of a rescue mission. They were having bake sales to keep the place afloat. Staff were updating their resumes. At every board meeting, they’d decide which bills to pay. (Bannow, 3/18)
Modern Healthcare:
Scripps Health To Build $1.2B Outpatient, Hospital Campus
Scripps Health plans to build a $1.2 billion medical campus that will include a 200- to 250-bed hospital and outpatient facilities. The San Diego-based health system’s board last week approved the 13-acre development in San Marcos, California. The first phase of the project will feature space for specialty and primary care offices, ambulatory surgery, cancer care, imaging, lab and other services, and the second phase includes the hospital, according to a Monday news release. (Kacik, 3/17)
The Boston Globe:
After A Big Donor Sought Care From A Dana-Farber Doctor, Things Went Awry
Day or night, Marc Cohen, a major donor to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, had a direct line to one of its leading oncologists. No question was too big or too small, and almost no hour was off limits for a consultation. Cohen and Dr. Kenneth C. Anderson exchanged hundreds of emails and texts over two decades about Cohen’s disease, multiple myeloma, a rare and incurable blood cancer that is Anderson’s specialty. It was no problem for the physician to pause a Sunday morning walk with his wife to weigh in on test results, respond to a 5:50 a.m. email on a Saturday to suggest medication for insomnia-inducing leg pain or jump on the phone at short notice. (Kowalczyk, 3/17)
In pharma and tech news —
The New York Times:
Digital Therapists Get Stressed Too, Study Finds
Even chatbots get the blues. According to a new study, OpenAI’s artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT shows signs of anxiety when its users share “traumatic narratives” about crime, war or car accidents. And when chatbots get stressed out, they are less likely to be useful in therapeutic settings with people. The bot’s anxiety levels can be brought down, however, with the same mindfulness exercises that have been shown to work on humans. (Nazaryan, 3/17)
MedPage Today:
Hair Loss: Another Wegovy Side Effect?
A preprint study suggested that GLP-1 receptor agonists may be associated with hair loss, though only in women. Using a random sample of 16 million patients, researchers found that women who newly initiated semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) had a twofold higher risk of hair loss than those starting on the weight-loss drug bupropion-naltrexone (Contrave). (Monaco, 3/17)
FiercePharma:
The Top 10 Drugs Losing US Exclusivity In 2025
While each year features high-profile losses of exclusivity in the pharma industry, this year's list is something of a doozy. Johnson & Johnson, Amgen, Regeneron, Novartis and other Big Pharma players are facing down sizable U.S. losses of exclusivity in 2025. (Sagonowsky, Liu, Kansteiner, Park, Dunleavy and Becker, 3/17)
The New York Times:
Leading A Movement Away From Psychiatric Medication
Ms. Delano is not a doctor; her main qualification, she likes to say, is having been “a professional psychiatric patient between the ages of 13 and 27.” During those years, when she attended Harvard and was a nationally ranked squash player, she was prescribed 19 psychiatric medications, often in combinations of three or four at a time. Then Ms. Delano decided to walk away from psychiatric care altogether. ... Since then, to the alarm of some physicians, an online DIY subculture focused on quitting psychiatric medications has expanded and begun to mature into a service industry. (Barry, 3/17)
Modern Healthcare:
GE HealthCare Launches New Editions Of Mac-Lab, CardioLab Systems
GE HealthCare launched new editions of its Mac-Lab, CardioLab and ComboLab cardiac procedure recording systems on Monday. The AltiX AI.i editions of the systems received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration and are designed to improve the user experience and the workflow in the cardiac catheterization lab, the company said. It also is meant to provide support for complex electrophysiology procedures. (Dubinsky, 3/17)
Fierce Healthcare:
OrganOx, ProCure Partner To Expand Access To Organ Transplant Tech
OrganOx, maker of a device to preserve liver donations, has teamed up with ProCure On-Demand, an organ recovery services provider. The partnership aims to improve the recovery and assessment of donor livers for transplantation by leveraging OrganOx’s normothermic machine perfusion (NMP) technology and ProCure’s solutions. ProCure offers surgical, preservation and logistics services to transplant centers and organ procurement organizations. (Gliadkovskaya, 3/17)
