Kristin Gourlay

Legislation that would allow the troubled Central Coventry Fire District to collect taxes through September 1st of this year is now headed to the Governor’s desk. The Rhode Island Senate passed the bill 29 to seven last night. It would give the district a little more breathing room to come up with a plan to raise funds. But it doesn’t provide a final solution to the town’s problems. State leaders have been reluctant to provide permanent relief to the town’s fire district, which has been operating in the red since last year.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island is responding to a lawsuit claiming that it stymied Steward Health Care’s bid to acquire Landmark Medical Center in Woonsocket.

Steward is the Massachusetts-based, for-profit health care chain that tried to acquire Landmark, which has been in receivership for several years. Steward filed suit in Superior Court this week claiming Blue Cross thwarted those plans purposefully to maintain what Steward calls an unlawful monopoly on commercial insurance and hospital services.

Westerly Hospital will lay off 45 employees, just before its sale to Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in New London, CT is completed.

Westerly’s new owners struck deals with hospital unions early on during acquisition talks. They agreed to keep most clinical positions. The 45 lay-offs don’t conflict with those commitments.

15 of the employees losing their jobs are unionized support staff. The rest are mainly from Westerly’s business office. Those functions will be consolidated at L&M’s headquarters in Connecticut.

At a news conference today, President Barack Obama responded to critics of his health care law, the Affordable Care Act, saying his administration is working hard to meet deadlines and launch the law's next features. A nice recap is posted on Kaiser Health News.

Rhode Island collected more than 23-hundred pounds of pharmaceuticals this past Saturday during a statewide prescription drug take-back event.

The Attorney General’s office says that beats the record of all six previous take-back events in Rhode Island.

Rhode Islanders were encouraged to bring unused or expired prescription medications to several locations throughout Rhode Island for authorities to dispose of safely.

Rhode Island collected more than 2300  pounds of pharmaceuticals this past Saturday during a statewide prescription drug take-back event.

The Attorney General’s office says that beats the record of all six previous take-back events in Rhode Island.

Rhode Islanders were encouraged to bring unused or expired prescription medications to several locations throughout Rhode Island for authorities to dispose of safely.

In the past year and a half, according to Rhode Island Department of Health records, seven physicians have been disciplined--some even forced to stop practicing medicine--for improperly prescribing narcotics.

Some of the toughest decisions any of us will ever make will take place in a doctor’s office. But before those decisions ever come up, doctors must often wrestle with the options themselves. And those options are growing more complicated every year. In this next to last episode in our series Future Docs, we ask how today’s medical students are learning to grapple with tomorrow’s ethical questions.

A state medical examiner is examining a body pulled from the water off of India Point in Providence. Providence Police Chief Hugh Clements told Rhode Island Public Radio that police suspect the body may be that of missing Brown University student Sunil Tripathi.  Department of Health spokeswoman Dara Chadwick says it may take a little time to identify the body.

“I can’t really give you a definitive time as to when we might know. I don’t know that we’ll be able to confirm an ID today. But, again, the exam is being done today," said Chadwick.

The Rhode Island Dental Association has filed suit in Superior Court against the Rhode Island Department of Health and the Board of Examiners in Dentistry. The suit alleges the state is abusing its power to regulate the dental profession.

The dentists’ group claims that state investigators illegally raided some dentists’ offices, interrupting one surgery in progress. The complaint also alleges that the state’s Board of Examiners in Dentistry failed to give dentists a clear set of regulations for handling anesthesia, controlling infection, and other practices.