The Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday voted 14-14 on whether to advance California Attorney General Xavier Becerra's nomination for HHS secretary, which means Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) can now bring the nomination to the full Senate for a vote, in today's bite-sized hospital and health industry news from the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Oklahoma.

• District of Columbia: The Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday voted 14-14 on whether to advance California Attorney General Xavier Becerra's nomination for HHS secretary. Under Senate rules, the split vote means Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) can now bring the nomination to the full Senate for a vote. According to Politico, unless any Democratic senators unexpectedly vote against the nomination, Becerra will likely be confirmed as HHS secretary as early as next week (Ollstein, Politico, 3/3; Sullivan, The Hill, 3/3; Wire, Los Angeles Times, 3/3).

• Massachusetts: John Kerndl, current EVP and CFO of Beaumont Health, is leaving his position to become CFO at Beth Israel Lahey Health System, effective March 16. Kerndl has worked at Beaumont since 2016 and before that, served as SVP and operations CFO of LifePoint Health in Tennessee (Gooch, Becker's Hospital Review, 3/2).

• Oklahoma: Kindred Healthcare and Mercy Hospital Oklahoma City on Tuesday announced that they have acquired Everest Rehabilitation Hospital of Oklahoma City under their existing joint venture. The companies, which did not disclose the financial terms of the acquisition, said the 36-bed rehabilitation hospital will be renamed Mercy Rehabilitation Hospital Oklahoma City South. "We know our patients need access to more rehab services to aid in their recovery and it's important to us to be able to offer a complete continuum of care at Mercy," Zack Dawson, VP of operations and post-acute services at Mercy, said. "We're excited those services will soon be available for even more patients in a convenient location" (Lagasse, Healthcare Finance, 3/2).