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A New Orleans health care nonprofit is acquiring three hospitals from a national chain in a deal that will leave two major players on the city’s hospital care scene. New Orleans-based LCMC Health will acquire three Tulane hospitals from HCA Healthcare. The deal includes Tulane Medical Center in downtown New Orleans, along with two suburban hospitals, Tulane Lakeside Hospital and Lakeview Regional Medical Center. (10/11)

Gov. Kevin Stitt is defending his push to outsource management of the state’s Medicaid program, one of his biggest policy achievements that Joy Hofmeister, his Democratic challenger, says she would work to undo if elected. (Felder, 10/11)

Maryland health officials are continuing a push to outsource Maryland’s public hospital services by asking a state spending panel meeting Wednesday to approve a projected $328 million award for the Western Maryland Hospital Center in Hagerstown — but providing few details about the plan. (Cohn, 10/12)

In the Central Valley, where two-thirds of the nation’s fruit and nuts are grown, the pastoral landscape masks entrenched racial and economic disparities. Life expectancy in Fresno County drops by 20 years depending on where you live, and it’s those who live in historically poor, redlined or rural neighborhoods who are most impacted by a resurgence of maternal and congenital syphilis. “Are you familiar with syphilis?” Hou Vang, a county communicable disease specialist, asks a pregnant woman standing in the shade of a tree outside her home. (Hwang, 10/10)

KHN: ‘Separate And Unequal’: Critics Say Newsom’s Pricey Medicaid Reforms Leave Most Patients Behind 

It wasn’t exactly an emergency, but Michael Reed, a security guard who lives in Watts, had back pain and ran out of his blood pressure medication. Unsure where else to turn, he went to his local emergency room for a refill. Around the same time, James Woodard, a homeless man, appeared for his third visit that week. He wasn’t in medical distress. Nurses said he was likely high on meth and just looking for a place to rest. (Hart, 10/12)

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has received a $25 million federal grant intended to help health officials address infectious disease outbreaks by deploying the burgeoning science of genomics. (Freyer, 10/10)

Cristina Ramsey, frail but defiant, arrived at the headquarters of Project Weber/Renew to say her goodbyes to people who had watched out for her for nearly two decades. She embraced staff members at the group, which helps drug users in one of this city’s poorest neighborhoods, convinced they had prolonged her life with clean needles, treatment, housing and friendship. She told them that she was going into hospice care and that the organization “really did help me — a lot.” (Weiland, 10/12)