AT&T today announced that AT&T Southeast (BellSouth Telecommunications) has reached a handshake on a tentative agreement with the Communications Workers of America in contract negotiations.

Additionally, AT&T and CWA have reached tentative agreements on two other smaller Southeast regional agreements covering AT&T Billing Southeast and Southeast Utility Operations.

The three-year agreements, terms of which were not disclosed, include wage increases in each year and modest pension increases. Paperwork is being finalized, AT&T said in a release.

The three agreements will be submitted to the union's membership for a ratification vote, and collectively cover more than 22,000 AT&T wireline employees in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

The agreements come on the heels of tentative agreements AT&T reached on July 21 in wireline contract negotiations for the AT&T Midwest region and AT&T Corp. (CWA Telecommunications and Technology Office), where contracts expired on April 7.

The board overseeing Lawrence Medical Center in Moulton, Ala., has chosen Huntsville Hospital over Brentwood-based RegionalCare Hospital Partners to manage the 37-bed facility. RegionalCare, which is run by former Province Healthcare CEO Marty Rash, runs hospitals in nearby Florence and Muscle Shoals.

The U.S. Army has awarded Turner Universal Construction a $51 million contract to build the next phase of its Missile Defense Agency complex at the Redstone Arsenal base in Huntsville. The 225,000-square-foot building will house administrative offices, IT facilities and meeting spaces and is expected to open its doors in two years.

SEE ALSO: Turner Universal scores major Marine contract from a year ago

Brentwood-based RegionalCare Hospital Partners has applied to build a $19.4 million cancer treatment center next to a proposed replacement Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital in northern Alabama. But the company led by Marty Rash looks set to run into opposition from nearby Helen Keller Hospital, one of five facilities also fighting RegionalCare's Eliza Coffee plans.

Construction company B.L. Harbert International says it will set up a Nashville office after recruiting a locally based health care veteran as a vice president. Ben Smith comes to Harbert after leading the Nashville and Atlanta markets for Harbert peer BE&K, which moved into the Middle Tennessee market about six years ago.

Local husband-and-wife team Harry and Nancy Mitchel have opened the doors to the first Nashville-area location of Yogurt Mountain, one of the many purveyors of self-serve frozen yogurt. The opening on Old Hickory Boulevard in Hermitage brings Yogurt Mountain's store network to 41, making it a little smaller than local chain Sweet CeCe's.

SEE ALSO: Our look last September at the recent and rapid growth of dessert chains

The day after it closed the doors to Hartselle Medical Center in Alabama for the last time, Capella Healthcare said it has signed a tentative agreement to sell the 150-bed hospital to Huntsville Hospital for a token $1.5 million.

However, Huntsville Hospital CEO David Spillers said they are not looking at a full-service inpatient hospital.

“Unfortunately, while you can’t make the hospital work as an inpatient facility, there may be an opportunity for us to provide some services on an outpatient basis,” Spillers said. “Certainly, we will look at trying to keep the physicians in the community by providing access to the services needed for their practices, such as lab and imaging services, if at all possible.”

HealthStream looks like it will be picking up some new subscribers to its online training services in the world of University of Alabama-Birmingham, says Avondale Partners analyst Richard Close. University officials recently said they will rebrand the HealthStream platform their Health Services Foundation began using in 2003 and take it systemwide.

Another advantage of the new learning management system will be the ability to self-register for elective learning courses, in addition to regulatory courses, from a single sign-on access point. Now, if a physician needs to take courses for research-related purposes and regulatory courses to meet state or federal requirements, he or she doesn’t have to go to several different locations. Individuals can search for the course they need and register for it on the new Faculty and Staff Learning System site.