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At 37% of hospital systems, benefit contributions charged to low-wage workers have been reduced, compared with 30% a year ago. Another 21% are considering such reductions in the next year, up from 15% last year, according to an annual survey released this week by financial-services firm Aon. The firm surveyed 145 health systems representing more than 1,200 hospitals and 2.6 million employees. (Hudson, 9/28)

Tax-exempt hospitals revamped their charity care policies during the pandemic, in some cases using vague language to describe who was eligible and occasionally tightening access based on immigration status, according to an analysis in JAMA Network Open. (Dreher, 9/28)

From 2021 through June 2022, 30 senior care providers declared bankruptcy, representing more than half of bankrupticies among large healthcare companies with more than $10 million in liabilities during that time, according to Gibbins Advisors research. (Christ, 9/28)

KHN: Turned Away From Urgent Care — And Toward A Big ER Bill 

Frankie Cook remembers last year’s car crash only in flashes. She was driving a friend home from high school on a winding road outside Rome, Georgia. She saw standing water from a recent rain. She tried to slow down but lost control of her car on a big curve. “The car flipped about three times,” Frankie said. “We spun around and went off the side of this hill. My car was on its side, and the back end was crushed up into a tree.” Frankie said the air bags deployed and both passengers were wearing seat belts, so she was left with just a headache when her father, Russell Cook, came to pick her up from the crash site. (Whitehead, 9/29)

KHN: Centene Agrees To Pay Massachusetts $14 Million Over Medicaid Prescription Claims 

Massachusetts has become the latest state to settle with health insurance giant Centene Corp. over allegations that it overbilled the state’s Medicaid program for pharmacy services, KHN has learned. Centene, the nation’s largest Medicaid managed-care insurer, will pay $14.2 million, according to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. An official announcement is expected later Thursday. (Miller and Young, 9/29)

The survey by the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association and the Massachusetts Association of Behavioral Health Systems found that 19.9 percent of inpatient psychiatric beds at surveyed facilities were offline due to staffing shortages. That’s up from 9 percent in February 2021. (Bartlett, 9/28)

Seattle Children’s Hospital is seeing “unprecedented demand” in its emergency department, resulting in longer wait times and providers seeing some patients in the waiting room, officials said this week. Seattle Children’s Emergency Medicine medical director Tony Woodward said after a lull at the start of the pandemic, the hospital has seen a steady increase in patients that have eclipsed a previous high in 2019, The Seattle Times reported. (9/29)

As some families wait months to find out how their loved ones died and Ohio's county coroners spend millions of dollars for the services of forensic pathologists amid a nationwide shortage, one county has quietly become the Boardwalk in an unfortunate game of morgue Monopoly. (Shuda, 9/29)

While the issue has become a political talking point during a close gubernatorial race between incumbent Tony Evers and Republican challenger Tim Michels, doctors, nurses, and other critical health care professionals continue to wait. (Hess, 9/28)

About two years ago, the North Carolina Association of Free & Charitable Clinics had a reality check. As an organization that provides health care services to uninsured and underserved residents, the association believed it was already making great strides in promoting health equity in a state with one of the largest uninsured populations. (Crumpler, 9/29)