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Authorities say an official count shows the number of homeless people in Arizona’s largest county surged 35% over two years amid a housing crisis and economic hardship caused by the coronavirus pandemic. A report released by the Maricopa Association of Governments says that 5,029 people in the county, including 3,096 people in Phoenix, experienced homelessness in unsheltered situations the night of Jan. 25. (Snow, 3/15)

When Timothy Pena was moved from a federal prison to a state prison in Arizona, he said the first thing the state prison authorities tried to do was take him off his HIV medication. After explaining to the medical staff that the federal prison provided him Genvoya, which was prescribed by his doctor, they switched Pena to a different drug that he said made him suicidal. “I spent the first four months in the Department of Correction trying to kill myself,” he told the PBS NewsHour. (Stabley, 3/14)

A North Carolina nursing home put its residents in “immediate jeopardy” when it failed to enact an emergency plan, leaving just three people to take care of 98 residents during a January storm, according to a state report released Monday. The News & Observer account says the report from the state Department of Health and Human Services said police arrived at Pine Ridge Health & Rehabilitation Center on the night of Jan. 16 after receiving a 911 call from a resident who complained about not seeing staff members for a “long period of time.” Police found two residents dead and two others in critical condition inside the nursing home. (3/15)

A Wallingford nursing home that once served as a COVID-19 recovery center will be shuttered after two patients died and a state Department of Public Health inspection that followed uncovered seven life-threatening violations. The 94 residents in the Quinnipiac Valley Center will be transferred to other facilities. The DPH assigned a temporary manager to oversee the transfer of the patients and sent an emergency alert to all nursing home providers, seeking new homes for the residents. (Altimari, 3/14)

Oklahoma’s health commissioner would no longer need to be a medical doctor or have a background in health administration under legislation the state Senate passed Monday. The Senate approved the bill on a 31-15 vote, with several Republicans joining Democrats in opposition. The measure now heads to the House for consideration. (3/14)

Idaho lawmakers breathed new life into a contentious bill aimed at preserving the state’s death penalty, holding a disputed re-vote Monday in committee and advancing the proposed law to the Senate floor for a full vote. House Bill 658 would shield suppliers of lethal injection drugs and all execution participants from any public disclosure, including in a court of law. Proponents have framed the bill as vital to maintaining capital punishment in the state. (Fixler, 3/14)

Washington state lawmakers are set to dedicate $1.5 million to removing toxic fluorescent lights from schools and another $125,000 to studying environmental hazards and creating new standards to protect students from exposure to harmful substances. In requesting the funding, lawmakers cited an investigation by The Seattle Times and ProPublica into a Seattle-area campus where children and staff were exposed to a combination of harmful conditions, including elevated levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a banned chemical that the Environmental Protection Agency has linked to cancer and other illnesses. (Ramadan, 3/14)

A La Pine man is suing St. Charles Health System in Bend for $43.5 million after complications from brain surgery left him paralyzed. Jackie Dale Yeley filed the lawsuit Thursday in Deschutes County Circuit Court, through attorneys with the Barton Law Group, The Bulletin reported. The lawsuit alleges medical malpractice and also names Bend-based surgery provider Northwest Brain and Spine. St. Charles was served with the lawsuit on Friday, according to spokeswoman Lisa Goodman. (3/15)

Massachusetts spent $1.5 billion less on health care in 2020 than 2019, the first time health care spending decreased since state officials began tracking the information in 2013. The decrease came as health care institutions halted elective procedures and patients canceled screenings and other preventive appointments out of fear of catching COVID-19. Experts said spending would surge back in the near future, as hospitals grapple with the consequences of delayed care. “We’re trying to constrain the growth of health care spending, [but] not the way that it happened in 2020,” said Ray Campbell, executive director of the state’s Centers for Health Information and Analysis, which released the report. “What you saw was a very indiscriminate approach.” (Bartlett, 3/14)

The West Virginia Legislature’s Republican supermajority failed to pass a controversial bill restricting how race is taught in public schools because they missed a midnight deadline in the final moments of the 2022 session, a state Senate spokesperson confirmed early Sunday. Lawmakers had spent weeks during the legislative session debating and advancing proposed bills similar to the “Anti-Racism Act of 2022.” It wasn’t immediately clear why Republicans waited until late Saturday to take the final vote. The act had passed the Senate and House overwhelmingly, and the late-night vote was merely to greenlight the House’s version. (Willingham, 3/13)