The American Cancer Society (ACS) and Color Health have announced a partnership introducing the Cancer Prevention and Screening Program, which aims to bring cancer and prevention screening solutions to employers and unions, in today's bite-sized hospital and health industry news from California, Illinois, and North Carolina.

• California: VillageMD has been selected for a two-year NIH study aimed at identifying patients with undiagnosed Alzheimer's disease using EHR data. The VillageMD Research Institute will partner with Together Senior Health and the University of California, San Francisco to identify warning signs in claims, demographic data, and healthcare data, including a person's history of stroke, ED visits, or appointment no-shows. The researchers intend to use machine learning so their tool is able to adapt over time. (Bruce, Becker's Health IT, 6/7)
• California/Illinois: ACS and Color Health have announced a partnership introducing the Cancer Prevention and Screening Program, which aims to bring cancer and prevention screening solutions to employers and unions. Patients will be able to access the program's service through a website, their phone, or an onsite location. "American Cancer Society obviously has a huge amount of depth on the scientific side, on screening guidelines, as well as a lot of resources around once people are diagnosed and ensuring that they have the right care pathways, the care navigation post diagnosis," said Color Health CEO Othman Laraki. "What Color has done … is be able to deliver these programs with very high scale." (Plescia, MedCity News, 6/7)
• North Carolina: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wrote North Carolina lawmakers saying it opposes a state Senate bill that would exempt the University of North Carolina health system from federal and state antitrust laws. FTC in the letter urged lawmakers to consider whether the bill supports "legitimate public policy goals" or if it will result in information sharing, joint contract negotiations, and other arrangements that could lead to a reduction in competition, increase costs, and lower wages for hospital employees. FTC said it will "investigate and challenge transactions that are anticompetitive, including in situations where legal defenses are asserted based on the state action doctrine and where the state fails to meet the necessary requirements." (Dreher, Axios, 6/8)