Here are 10 hospitals or health systems that have announced, advanced or completed construction projects in the last two weeks:

Ten transactions involving hospitals and health systems have been announced, finalized or advanced since Nov. 1.

Francis Collins, MD, PhD, outgoing director of the National Institutes of Health delivered strong words on misinformation in science in an interview with The Washington Post Nov 19.

Mayo Clinic's financial and operating performance was strong in the first nine months of this year, with revenue gains offsetting higher expenses, according to financial documents released Nov. 18. 

Community Hospital Long Beach (Calif.) plans to lay off employees early next year, according to a notice recently filed with state regulators. 

A group of Chester County officials are working to keep a Pennsylvania hospital slated to close Jan. 1 from shutting down, according to Daily Local News.

Several senators introduced a bill called the Bolstering Infectious Outbreak Preparedness Workforce Act, which would allow $50 million to be used for a student loan repayment program for infectious disease and bio-preparedness healthcare workers.

The first known person to contract COVID-19 was likely a vendor at an animal market in Wuhan, China — not an accountant who lived about 18 miles from the market, as a World Health Organization team previously suggested — a leading expert in virus evolution wrote in a Nov. 18 article for Science. 

Catholic Health's Mercy Hospital of Buffalo (N.Y.) will keep the emergency department at the Mercy Ambulatory Care Center in Orchard Park, N.Y., closed for the next several weeks, the health system announced Nov. 18.

University of Vermont Health Network in Burlington appointed Rebecca Shutts, MSN, RN, and Heather Stein, MD, to leadership positions in November.

A physician who owned and operated a heart institute in Florida was sentenced to seven years in prison for performing unnecessary surgical procedures and defrauding health insurance providers, the Justice Department said Nov. 18.

New York City is the most expensive city in the U.S. for prescriptions while Denver is the least expensive, according to recent research from GoodRx.

The federal government will send two emergency medical teams to Minnesota to support hospital staffing needs, Gov. Tim Walz announced Nov. 17.

A CDC analysis published Nov. 18 predicts that when the nationwide intensive care unit bed capacity hits or exceeds 75 percent, thousands of additional excess deaths occur over the following two weeks. 

Johnson City, Tenn.-based Ballad Health is making a more than $310 million investment to improve healthcare in southwest Virginia by partnering with two community foundations, which give it full ownership of two area hospitals.

Only 55 percent of medical school residents reported consistently completing discharge summaries for hospitalized patients being transferred to skilled nursing facilities, a study published in the November issue of Journal of the American Medical Directors Association found.

Patients who use home health programs are readmitted to hospitals slightly less than those patients transferred to skilled nursing facilities, according to the 2021 AHHQI Home Health Chartbook released Nov. 18. 

A new study from Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C., found that patients with multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children — a rare but serious immune response linked to COVID-19 — had more severe illness during the second wave of patients compared to the first wave. 

From litigation over federal vaccination mandates to air ambulance companies filing a lawsuit to halt a surprise-billing rule provision, here are the latest healthcare industry lawsuits making headlines. 

Two providers in California's Kern County — Adventist Health Kern County and Kern Medical — said Nov. 16 they have entered a partnership aimed at strengthening the physician network and expanding patient access to care.