The Pulse

As Rhode Island’s health insurance commissioner, Marie Ganim knows a lot about health plans. So when she started to get calls from telemarketers hawking a new type of short-term health insurance, she decided to play along.

Care New England announced Wednesday that it has signed an agreement for a takeover of Rhode Island’s second-largest hospital network by Boston-based Partners HealthCare.

The deal, if approved by federal and state regulators, would mark a giant shift in Rhode Island’s healthcare market, granting Massachusetts’ largest health system huge influence -- and pricing power -- over Rhode Island’s health system.

Rhode Island health clinics would be prohibited from providing abortion services or referrals if they receive federal Title X funds, under the Trump administration’s proposed changes to the family-planning program.

A new report by Blue Cross Blue Shield shows Rhode Island has the highest rate of diagnosis for major depression in the country.

Major depression -- characterized by persistent sadness and trouble performing routine daily activities – is second only to high blood pressure in its impact on overall health for Americans covered by commercial insurance, according to Blue Cross.

At the urging of the Rhode Island Medical Society, Governor Gina M. Raimondo has agreed to explore the creation of safe injection sites in Rhode Island.

A new study  by the Association of American Medical Colleges offers fresh evidence that academic medicine is a major driver of Rhode Island’s economy.

The streets of Lisbon, Portugal were once described as littered with syringes. During the 1990s, this southern European country roughly the size of Maine had one of the worst drug epidemics in the world. Today, Portugal boasts one of the lowest rates of overdose deaths in the European Union. How did they do it?