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The Joint Commission will strengthen health equity standards within its hospital accreditation programs and launch a certification focused on disparities in patient care. The nonprofit accrediting agency added mandates on strategy and data collection for health system leaders earlier this year, including standards on screening patients for social determinants of health and stratifying safety and quality data by race and ethnicity. Beginning Saturday, those standards will be designated as national patient safety goals. (Hartnett, 6/27)

The antitrust agency voted Tuesday to publish a proposed rule that would, in part, require merging parties to disclose any minority investors in an effort to weed out any conflicts of interest; information about prior acquisitions; supplier agreements; subsidies from foreign entities; and workforce data, including information on executives and board members. The FTC estimated the requirements would add an average of 107 hours to the current average time of 37 hours that it takes to prepare a merger filing. (Kacik, 6/27)

The health care provider arm of retail giant CVS reached an agreement with the Justice Department on Tuesday after investigators found that the company failed to provide proper interpretation services for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing during their appointments with medical staff. (Gagosz, 6/27)

The flier advertising the Florida nursing school came in the mailbox of Ramatu Ali’s Delaware home. It promised a “bridge” program for lower-level nurses to become higher-skill, better-paid registered nurses. Ali and four of her friends — all licensed practical nurses from the Philadelphia area — piled into Ali’s car and drove to an open house at a Penn’s Landing hotel to learn more about the Palm Beach School of Nursing. (Ruderman, 6/28)

While there’s no cure for Alzheimer’s and related dementias, an early diagnosis can help patients improve their quality of life, by taking medications to slow progression and partaking in services like speech therapy to manage symptoms. But Alzheimer’s and dementias are understudied in American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander people, and screenings have been developed and modeled on mostly white people. (Hassanein, 6/27)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Will The Doctor See You Now? The Health System’s Changing Landscape

Lucia Agajanian, a 25-year-old freelance film producer in Chicago, doesn’t have a specific primary care doctor, preferring the convenience of visiting a local clinic for flu shots or going online for video visits. “You say what you need, and there’s a 15-minute wait time,” she said, explaining how her appointments usually work. “I really liked that.” But Olga Lucia Torres, a 52-year-old who teaches narrative medicine classes at Columbia University in New York, misses her longtime primary care doctor, who kept tabs for two decades on her conditions, including lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, and made sure she was up to date on vaccines and screening tests. Two years ago, Torres received a letter informing her that he was changing to a “boutique practice” and would charge a retainer fee of $10,000 for her to stay on as a patient. (Appleby and Andrews, 6/28)