Daily Briefing

Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives have signed an agreement to merge, which would create the largest nonprofit hospital system by operating revenue in the nation, although Kaiser Permanente would remain the country’s largest nonprofit integrated system. The deal—which is subject to state, federal, and church approval—is expected to close in the second half of 2018. More

The Unicode Consortium, the international nonprofit that coordinates the popular Unicode standard for encoding text, on Monday announced its list of 130 "draft candidates" for new emojis—including "petri dish," "microbe," and dozens of others related to health care. More

A Vox and Health Care Cost Institute analysis of data from employer-sponsored plans found that spending on ED facility fees rose by more than $3 billion between 2009 and 2015, but the American College of Emergency Physicians is pushing back against the findings, arguing the analysis's data set "leaves out a major portion of the picture and skews the article's findings." More

Hormonal contraception, even formulations with low doses of estrogen, are associated with an increased risk of breast cancer—although the increase in absolute risk is small, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. More

President Trump, who signed the two-week stopgap spending measure on Friday, has begun negotiations with Republican and Democratic leaders on a longer-term spending bill that lawmakers say is likely to include new funding for CHIP. More

The tax reform bill, which lawmakers in the House and Senate are negotiating in a conference committee, could include language eliminating the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) individual mandate penalty, as well as language limiting tax-exempt financing for nonprofit hospitals. More

Temp doctors, called locum tenens, provide a similar level of care as staff physicians, according to a study in JAMA—a finding that could help alleviate the stigma of locum tenens physicians as less-skilled doctors. More

How life has unfolded for a girl called a "feral child" and her adoptive father, how vitamin D might be tied to better sleep, and more. More

Vista Del Mar Hospital lost at least two facilities in the fire, in today's bite-sized hospital and health industry news from California, Idaho, and New York. More