State Highlights: New Mass. A.G. Steps Into Fray Over Partners HealthCare Deal; Emergency Overdose Treatment To Cost Cities Less

WBUR: AG Healey Weighs In Against Partners Acquisition Of South Shore Hospital
On her first Monday morning as Massachusetts attorney general, Maura Healey stepped into a fight that may well continue through her first term. Healey said, in short, that Partners HealthCare should not be allowed to acquire South Shore Hospital and that she would sue to block the acquisition. (Bebinger, 1/26)

The Boston Globe: Healey Opposes Deal With Partners HealthCare
Newly elected Attorney General Maura Healey put pressure on a Superior Court judge Monday to reject a controversial deal that would allow Partners HealthCare to take over three community hospitals, saying in a court filing that she would sue to stop the mergers if the opportunity arises. (McCluskey and Weisman, 1/26)

The New York Times: Treatment Of Overdose Will Cost Cities Less
The Clinton Foundation on Monday announced that it had negotiated a lower price for an emergency treatment that can prevent overdoses with a company that makes it. The soaring cost of the treatment has constrained its widespread use by municipalities across the country. Naloxone is a medication that reverses the effects of prescription painkiller or heroin overdoses. Doctors and paramedics give it to people who have stopped breathing or lost consciousness. In the past it was used mostly in medical settings like hospitals, but in recent years its use has spread to homes or on the streets, where overdoses commonly occur, a trend experts say can improve the chances of saving a person’s life. (Tavernise, 1/26)

The Badger Herald: Wisconsin Lawmakers To Push Mental Health Care This Session
Mental health care in Wisconsin may be receiving more attention in the upcoming legislative session, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester announced late January. Vos introduced a committee in an earlier session that has carried out assessments of mental health needs in Wisconsin. Vos also recently created a new Assembly committee to instigate mental health care development, which will begin this fall. (Saxena, 1/26)

Georgia Health News: School Bus Driver: I Work For The Benefits
[Gov. Nathan] Deal’s budget plan would eliminate health coverage for 11,500 “non-certificated’’ school personnel who work fewer than 30 hours a week, including school bus drivers and cafeteria workers. The proposal has generated broad concern among lawmakers and health advocates. (Miller, 1/26)

The Associated Press: Ex-Executive Seeks To Toss Medicaid Suit Extortion Claims
A former executive who sued a firm managing part of the privatized Medicaid program in Kansas asked a judge Monday to toss out counterclaims accusing her of trying to extort $3 million, calling those claims a "not so thinly-veiled campaign of retaliation." The latest legal dustup comes in the federal lawsuit filed against Sunflower State Health Plan Inc. and parent Centene Corporation by former Sunflower Vice President Jacqueline Leary. Her lawsuit, filed in October, contends she was wrongfully fired after protesting potentially improper cost-cutting moves for the Kansas Medicaid program. (Hegeman, 1/26)

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Emergency Room Visits Decline As Navigators Steer Patients To Proper Medical Care
Three hospitals in Western Pennsylvania have found a way to blunt these problems by connecting patients with people in their communities. Known as navigators, they help patients schedule doctor appointments, find transportation, pick up medications and make sure they're sticking to discharge instructions after a hospital stay. Navigators are not medical professionals or social workers. They're more like a trusted neighborhood problem solver trained to help patients overcome obstacles to getting the care they need. During a nine-month-long pilot program, Jameson Health System in New Castle, Saint Vincent Hospital in Erie and Allegheny Valley Hospital in Natrona Heights found that navigators were effective in getting patients to access medical care more efficiently, according to consulting firm Accenture, which ran the program, and the Highmark Foundation, which funded it. (Nixon, 1/26)

The New York Times: Joan Rivers’s Daughter Files Malpractice Suit Against Manhattan Clinic
Ms. Rivers went into cardiac and respiratory arrest during the procedure on Aug. 28 and died several days later. There has been no official determination of exactly what it was that killed her, though federal health investigators found a number of errors, including a failure by those treating Ms. Rivers to notice that her vital signs were dropping, which the lawsuit said contributed to the death. The lawsuit also said the closing of Ms. Rivers’s vocal cords was a cause. The defendants include Dr. Korovin; the clinic; Renuka Bankulla, the anesthesiologist; and Dr. Cohen, who stepped down as the clinic’s medical director. (Hartocollis, 1/26)

Bay Area News Group: Kaiser Nurses Ratify Contract
Northern and Central California nurses have overwhelmingly approved a three-year contract with Kaiser Permanente. Registered nurses and nurse practitioners voted on the agreement last week in membership meetings from Santa Rosa to Fresno. The nurses are members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United representing some 18,000 Kaiser nurses. (Parr, 1/26)

The Albuquerque Journal: Judge Calls For Hearing On Health Dept. Case Against Nonprofit
A state district judge ruled Friday that the state Human Services Department likely violated the due process rights of a northern New Mexico behavioral health nonprofit in a case involving questioned Medicaid billings. District Judge Francis Mathew called for a full hearing on the agency’s evidence against Easter Seals El Mirador, the nonprofit that sued HSD in August to obtain about $671,000 in Medicaid reimbursements it claims it is owed. (Boyd, 1/26)

The Southeast Missourian: Deaths By Suicide Appear To Be Increasing Across Missouri
More deaths are attributed to suicide in Missouri than homicides and DWI-related accidents combined. And the numbers are climbing. Yet mental health professionals say stigmas associated with mental illness and depression remain obstacles for people who struggle to find solutions they need. (Miller, 1/26)

The Chicago Sun-Times: Trial To Begin In Ghoulish Medicare Fraud Case
He’s been free for nearly two years after posting an astonishing $10 million bond. But most of the patients who ended up at Ed Novak’s West Side hospital weren’t so fortunate. Poor, elderly and vulnerable, many found themselves driven by ambulance across the city, past countless better hospitals, to Sacred Heart, the maggot-infested, substandard Sacred Heart Hospital where some of them died, federal prosecutors say. Their doctors would never have sent them to Sacred Heart if Novak, who owned the hospital and acted as its CEO, wasn’t dishing out illegal kickbacks so that he could reap millions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid payments, the feds say. (Janssen, 1/26)