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Southern Nevada's first dispensary now open after months of red tape, medical marijuana cultivators are facing growing pains as they grapple with the state's strict testing standards…growers…failed…led to pounds of marijuana being destroyed,..Dispensaries report several batches of cannabis failing to meet the required levels for pesticides, mycotoxins or heavy metals,… Nevada's toughest-in-the-nation standards for marijuana quality are working.

(Mario DeSanctis) director of the Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center has been fired, becoming the second top official ousted amid reports of over-medication practices at the facility…. reports of excessive opioid prescriptions being written there… patients at Tomah facility were more likely than patients at other VA hospitals to receive high doses of pain killers.

Hospitals across the country are under growing pressure to reduce preventable medical mistakes, the errors that can cause real harm and even death to patients…Department of Veterans Affairs, which runs a massive system of hospitals and clinics that cared for 5.8 million veterans last year, is doing less, not more, to identify what went wrong to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Data-driven fight begins with goal to cut overuse of antibiotics…Fifty hospital and health system members of Premier…are testing, defining and scaling new strategies in a nationwide effort to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria…goal is to reduce antibiotic overuse by 20 percent and implement the Centers for Disease Control's core elements of its antibiotic stewardship program by July 2016.

MountainView Hospital…announced a $90 million expansion project….will include the addition of 64 beds, the expansion of women's services, the upgrade of the neonatal intensive care unit, the expansion of the emergency department and a new medical office building…When the expansion is complete, MountainView will grow to a 400-bed hospital,…Construction is expected to take 18 months.

To date, nearly 143.8 million people have had their protected health information compromised in a HIPAA breach. Here's a list of the 10 biggest in the U.S.

August was a horrible month for biotech stocks. The breadth of the selling during the month was impressive. Among all U.S.-listed biotech stocks regardless of market cap, only 68 companies managed to end August with higher stock prices, while 267 biotech stocks lost ground,… If you want to be an optimist, note the IBB ETF is still outperforming the broader market for the year.

Henderson City Council approved a medical marijuana dispensary…that plans to open on Eastern Avenue, south of the 215 Beltway…The Source Henderson…fourth dispensary…None have opened yet. Clark County has only one dispensary in business, Euphoria Wellness in the southwest Las Vegas Valley.

CVS Health Corp said..its decision to stop selling tobacco products last year led to a 1 percent decrease in cigarette sales...The September 2014 decision hurt sales, with general merchandise revenue at CVS pharmacies open at least a year falling 7.8 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier,.., CVS said it benefited in others ways…nicotine patch purchases rose 4 percent…visits to its retail clinics for smoking cessation counseling nearly doubled.

U.S. appeals court has cleared the way for Novartis AG to launch the first biosimilar drug in the United States as it declined on Wednesday to stop the sale of the company's copycat version of Amgen Inc's blockbuster cancer drug Neupogen (filgrastim)…. Novartis (Sandoz) could begin to market its biosimilar drug, to be sold under the name Zarxio…. a version of Neupogen, have been available in Europe since 2006...