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Seeking to secure justice for thousands of rape victims, about 20 states are moving to test a backlog of unexamined rape kits found in storage rooms in police departments across the country — and change the rules for how rape cases are handled in the future. ... The goal of all the legislation is to ensure that forensic evidence in the kits, such as DNA that is collected from victims in an invasive process that can last four to six hours, is promptly and properly tested to help identify and prosecute suspected rapists. The DNA evidence is placed in an FBI database so that it can be compared to that of criminals and suspects who’ve had theirs taken. (Beitsch, 2/17)

When Kentucky officials launched a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign to promote its new health care options, including an expanded Medicaid program, they assumed they might find a few thousand people who qualified under the old program. (Beam 2/16)

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin is rejecting proposed state mental health rules that would have prohibited payments to independent counselors and therapists to treat Medicaid-eligible Oklahoma children. Fallin said Tuesday she's rejecting the proposal by the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services that was enacted as a result of budget cuts to state agencies. (2/16)

Hit by recent cuts in state mental health programs, Wyandot Inc., an umbrella organization for four nonprofit agencies in Kansas City, Kan., has eliminated 26 positions. Six of the positions were vacant and won’t be filled and six other employees accepted transfers to other positions in the organization, leaving a total of 14 who lost their jobs. (Margolies and Sherry, 2/16)

An ex-medical technician has been indicted on charges of tampering with narcotics at a Colorado hospital, leading authorities to urge nearly 3,000 people who had surgery there to be tested for blood-borne diseases, federal prosecutors said on Tuesday. The case was brought after the defendant was caught swapping a syringe containing fentanyl citrate, a powerful synthetic opiate, for a dose of an unspecified substance during a patient’s surgery last month, U.S. Attorney John Walsh said in a statement. (Gorman, 2/16)

Senate Bill 277, which goes into effect July 1, eliminates personal belief exemptions and requires children to be vaccinated in order to attend public or private school or day care. Parents will have to show vaccination records to enroll their child in a new school, kindergarten or seventh grade. The only way out is to get a release from doctors for medical reasons (such as having an allergic reaction to shots) or to home school. (Renner, 2/16)

The phone call in September gave Carol Albert some hope: After years on a waiting list, her daughter Casey seemed poised to get a spot in a state program for people with brain injuries. (Levin Becker, 2/16)

The company said 2015 was particularly strong because of a 37 percent growth in business contracts worth more than $5 million and a 62 percent growth in contracts worth more than $10 million. It was the best year in Cerner’s history for new bookings, with both large hospitals and smaller ambulatory facilities contributing. Part of Cerner’s continuing workload is its collaboration with Leidos on a $16.3 billion contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to digitize and improve the military’s health records system. Last year also completed Cerner’s acquisition of Siemens Health Services. (Stafford, 2/16)

A Baltimore-based startup offering privacy tools for electronic medical records announced Tuesday it had raised $4 million in a fundraising round. Protenus received funding from a group of investors led by Arthur Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm with offices in Fargo, N.D., and Minneapolis. Other investors in the Series A financing round included LionBird Venture Capital, DreamIt Ventures, Cognosante, TEDCO and the Baltimore Angels. Founded by a pair of former Johns Hopkins medical students, Protenus offers tools to protect electronic medical records from employee snooping, and identifies when the records are accessed inappropriately. (Wells, 2/16)

“Hillbilly heroin,” they called it – OxyContin, and other opioid prescription painkillers. Police Chief Bill Hollingsed of Waynesville, in Western North Carolina’s Haywood County, recalls about four years ago when the county medical examiner shared with him a shocking statistic: Twenty-five percent of recent deaths investigated by that office were attributable to overdose of these drugs. (Sisk, 2/17)

[Guissela Mariluz is] one of at least 3,600 men and women in Massachusetts who help patients pay bills, arrange pet or child care so the patient can have surgery, or sit with them at an AA meeting. It’s a job that’s been taking shape for decades but is just now becoming a more formal profession. Massachusetts is finalizing rules that are expected to establish the first voluntary community health certification. (Bebinger, 2/17)

Michigan, seeking to prevent another oversight fiasco after lead poisoning in Flint and a deadly Legionnaires' disease outbreak in the area, is considering new water testing rules for hospitals and possible changes to how large facilities manage their water systems that could include new monitoring requirements. (Williams, 2/16)

A South Florida teen has been arrested after authorities say he was posing as a doctor at an illegal medical office he ran. The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office says in a news release that 18-year-old Malachi Love-Robinson was arrested Tuesday and charged with practicing medicine without a license. At the West Palm Beach clinic he opened, officials say Love-Robinson performed a physical exam on an undercover agent and offered medical advice Tuesday. (2/16)