This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

Regular readers will be pleasantly surprised that rural healthcare notches a spot in the win column. Amid myriad hospital and emergency department closures, one solution is offered by WellSpan Health – “small-format” 10-bed hospitals, two of which opened in York County this month (a third is slated for Carlisle), with diagnostic capabilities and the ability to treat typical ER complaints like sprains and infections.

A new “Narcan In Courts” initiative spearheaded by the Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs will supply courthouses and judicial buildings across the state with the overdose-reversal medication naloxone. The department is providing 600 Narcan kits to the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, with the goal of placing a kit in each of the state’s 512 Magisterial District Judge courts and all 67 county courthouses for emergency use.

It’s not a “Best Places to Live” list without commonwealth inclusion. Three Philadelphia-area towns – Ardmore, Devon and Penn Wynne – came in as the seventh-, eighth- and ninth-best places to live in the country, respectively, according to the newest rankings from Niche. The rankings cite the area’s public schools, proximity to shopping and cities and old Main Line communities as the leading reasons residents love them. 

New research published in the Annals of Global Health found that between 3,085 and 3,467 deaths in southwestern Pennsylvania in 2019 were likely attributable to fine-particle air pollution, also known as PM2.5. Researchers also estimated that pollution in the region caused 229 premature births, resulted in 177 infants with low birth weight and led to 12 stillbirths.

The financial news keeps getting worse for Jefferson, which saw a Philadelphia jury return a $109 million malpractice verdict – the largest such ruling in years – against the health system in a birth injury case associated with a pediatric practice it acquired in a recent merger. Jefferson was already struggling with a negative balance sheet, losing $91 million in the first half of fiscal 2026.

The state’s Office of Child Advocate has remained vacant for more than a year, prompting community members, survivors and child welfare advocates to call for direct action to protect the state’s youth. Maryann McEvoy, the previous state child advocate, resigned from the position in January 2025. The extended vacancy has led to calls to establish an independent Office of Child Advocate with greater authority and oversight.