State Highlights: Texas Health Officials’ Salaries Draw Fire; Most Conn. Hospitals In The Black, But Still Feel Like They’re Struggling

Dallas Morning News: Executives Have Received Big Pay Raises At Social Services Agency That's Under Fire 
Under Gov. Greg Abbott, more and more top officials at Texas' social services superagency command big salaries. Not counting staff physicians, the Health and Human Services Commission has 11 administrators making $200,000 a year or more. A decade ago, there were none. When Abbott took office in January 2015, there were just three. Over the past 13 months, 10 top commission officials have received five-digit raises — of between $10,000 and $72,000 apiece, according to a review by The Dallas Morning News of open records. Most of the huge pay bumps, if not all, resulted from promotions. (Garrett, 10/5)

The CT Mirror: More CT Hospitals End 2016 In The Black But Fiscal Picture Mixed
Twenty of the 28 hospitals in Connecticut had positive total margins — meaning they were in the black — in the 2016 fiscal year, up from 17 the year before, according to a report by the state Office of Health Care Access. Despite the clear majority with positive margins, however, some hospitals still struggled in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2016. (Rigg, 10/5)

The Associated Press: Ex-Official: Legionnaires’, Flint Water Were Thorny Issues
Michigan’s former head of disease control said Wednesday that an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in the Flint area was a sensitive topic at the same time that Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration was being challenged over water quality in the poor city. Corinne Miller returned to the witness stand at a key court hearing involving her former boss, Nick Lyon, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. He’s charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of an 85-year-old man who was treated for Legionnaires’ six months before he succumbed to congestive heart failure in 2015. (10/4)

The Associated Press: Michigan Lawmakers Vote To Preemptively Ban Soda, Food Taxes
Michigan lawmakers voted Wednesday to prohibit local taxes on food, drinks and gum in a pre-emptive strike against any municipality that might consider levying a tax on soda and other sugary and artificially sweetened items. No local government in Michigan is now considering such a tax. But majority Republicans said it is possible, pointing to Philadelphia and the Chicago area as places with soda taxes. Similar taxes have been approved in San Francisco and Oakland, California. (Eggert, 10/4)

Los Angeles Times: San Diego Hepatitis Outbreak Continues To Grow: 481 Cases
Add 20 more cases and 22 more hospitalizations to San Diego County’s ever-growing hepatitis A outbreak.Tuesday afternoon the county Health and Human Services Agency raised the number of the outbreak’s confirmed cases to 481 from 461 and hospitalizations to 337 from 315. The death count associated with the outbreak, which started in November 2016, remained at 17 for a second straight week. (Sisson, 10/4)

Arizona Republic: Arizona's Foster-Care Complaint Now A Class-Action Lawsuit
U. S. District Court Judge Roslyn Silver granted class-action status in the litigation, filed 2 ½ years ago against the state, on behalf of a number of foster children. ... In August, 900 children entered the system when they were removed from their homes due to allegations of abuse and neglect, according to the Department of Child Safety. (Pitzi, 10/3)

The Washington Post: A Mother Refused To Follow A Court Order To Vaccinate Her Son. Now She’s Going To Jail.
A Michigan woman will spend seven days in jail after she defied a judge’s order to have her 9-year-old son vaccinated. Rebecca Bredow was sentenced for contempt of court Wednesday, nearly a year after an Oakland County judge ordered her to have her son vaccinated. Bredow had been given until Wednesday to get her son the medically allowed amount of vaccination, which would be up to eight vaccines. But the Detroit area mother, citing her religious beliefs, had refused to do so. (Phillips, 10/4)

The Oregonian: State Fails To Protect Frail Residents From Potential Harm, Audit Finds 
A state-funded program that aims to help elderly low-income people and those with disabilities get care to stay in their homes has failed to fully protect them from potential harm, an audit by the Secretary of State's Office said Tuesday. The report said the Oregon Department of Human Services should take "immediate action" to improve oversight to guarantee "the safety and well-being" of those using the consumer-employed provider program. (Terry, 10/4)

The Washington Post: Prosecutors Slammed For ‘Lack Of Moral Compass,’ Withholding Evidence In Widening Mass. Drug Lab Scandal
Twice in recent years, chemists used by the state of Massachusetts to test drugs in criminal cases committed massive misconduct in their testing, affecting tens of thousands of cases. And twice, prosecutors in Massachusetts failed to act promptly to notify most defendants of the problem. Instead, the prosecutors have taken years to seek justice for the defendants affected by the bad drug testing in both episodes, causing some people to wrongly spend years in prison. (Jackman, 10/4)

Georgia Health News: Sick Georgians Swamped By Medical Bills Seek Help Wherever They Can Find It
Crowdfunding first got attention as a way for inventors, entrepreneurs and aspiring filmmakers to raise money to finance their projects. But in the past few years, another category has emerged and seen exponential growth: health care. Increasingly, people are asking friends and strangers on the Internet to help them pay their medical bills. (Ridderbusch, 10/3)

Chicago Sun Times: Little Company Of Mary Hospital To Join Rush System 
Little Company of Mary Hospital will join the Rush system under a nonbinding letter of intent announced Wednesday by officials of the two health care organizations. Little Company of Mary Hospital is an Evergreen Park, Ill. community hospital with 272 beds. The hospital is one of 12 locations in the south and southwest suburbs. It employs more than 2,000 employees. Little Company would remain a Catholic ministry, the organizations said. (Ruminski, 10/4)

Houston Chronicle: Four Houston-Area Hospitals Reach $8.6M Settlement Over Ambulance-Swapping Allegations 
The U.S. Justice Department has reached an $8.6 million settlement with a hospital company following whistleblower allegations that four of the company's Houston-area hospitals pressured ambulance companies into swapping cheap rides for some patients in exchange for lucrative opportunities to shuttle other patients, federal authorities confirmed. The hospitals area all affiliated with the Hospital Corporation of America, based in Nashville, which agreed to the settlement, according to a Justice Department announcement on Wednesday. (Banks, 10/4)

New Hampshire Union Leader: Police Probe Claims Against Suspended Physician
Claremont police have launched an investigation into sexual assault allegations against Dr. Eric Knight, the Claremont physician whose license was quickly suspended last month once a former patient told her allegations of unwanted sex to state medical investigators. Claremont Police Chief Mark Chase said he started the investigation after receiving material about Knight in the mail from the New Hampshire Board of Medicine. He stressed the investigation will take time. (Hayward, 10/4)

Boston Globe: Federal Prosecutors Launch Investigation Of Prominent Surgeon Who Double-Booked Operations
The US attorney’s office may be looking at whether Dr. David Samadi was in the operating room for “critical parts” of his surgeries. (Saltzman, 10/5)

San Jose Mercury News: San Jose Sobering Center Opens With High Hopes
Santa Clara County’s newest stab at reducing public drunkenness — a state-of-the-art “sobering station’’ — opened its doors in a room in county’s Reentry Center for former inmates, across from a police parking lot. Beginning with Sunnyvale, Campbell and the sheriff’s office, officers can drop off severely intoxicated but otherwise mellow people to dry out — at what officials hope will be a cheaper cost to taxpayers than an emergency room or jail. (Kaplan, 10/4)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: As Many As 450,000 People In The County Live In Food Deserts; Group Wants To Increase Access To Supermarkets
That area of Euclid was just one of dozens of food deserts in Cuyahoga County. ...That leaves them vulnerable for illnesses like heart disease and stroke, health officials say. (Christ, 10/4)