FDA granted its first approval to an electronic cigarette, in today's bite-sized hospital and health industry news from California, Illinois, and Maryland.

• California: Amid a staffing shortage, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) extended its deadline for staff to receive the Covid-19 vaccine from Oct. 15 to Nov. 15. As of Sept. 27, a fifth of employees were still unvaccinated. "We don't want people to be out of jobs," said interim superintendent, Megan Reilly. "Our employees are one of the strongest assets that we have." (Chen, Axios, 10/12)

• Illinois: CommonSpirit Health on Tuesday announced that its CEO, Lloyd Dean, plans to retire in the summer of 2022. According to Dean, the organization's board has known about his plan to retire for some time and set criteria for the transition that have now been met. "While we haven't talked about it publicly up until this point, that was always the plan of the board and always the plan of myself," said Dean. "I think that we set some criteria for when that would happen and I'm excited that we have met that threshold." (Bannow, Modern Healthcare, 10/12)

• Maryland: FDA on Tuesday announced that R.J. Reynolds Vapor Company's Vuse Solo device and its affiliated tobacco-flavored cartridges passed the premarket approval process—making it the first electronic nicotine delivery system to gain FDA approval. In addition, R.J. Reynolds received rejection notices for 10 other applications for unspecified flavored products. Meanwhile, FDA said that an application for Vuse Solo's menthol-flavored products is still under review. (Phend, MedPage Today, 10/12)