First Tennessee Bank is ramping up its presence in the Mid-Atlantic states of North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia and moving to a larger building in Raleigh, N.C. to make room for 10 additional employees and new services, the company announced today.

This will mark First Tennessee’s first notable expansion since the mid-2000s when new branch locations were built throughout the state.

David Popwell, First Tennessee president of banking, called the move a “reorganization” and said the bank is committed to growing its footprint outside of Tennessee and into both North Carolina (Winston-Salem, Charlotte and Raleigh) and Virginia (Richmond).

“Our growth and success in the Mid-Atlantic Region has resulted from combining experienced, responsive professionals with a complete set of financial products and the flexible operating framework of a boutique banking operation,” Popwell said in a press release. "The Mid-Atlantic Region shares many characteristics of our Tennessee regions. We are pleased by the response in the Raleigh market, which allows us to enhance the depth of our service to meet the expanding needs of businesses and individuals."

Expanded services will include private client banking, wealth management, corporate and commercial lending and commercial real estate, according to the release.

First Tennessee, a subsidiary of Memphis-based First Horizon National Corp. (Ticker: FHN), suffered massive losses in First Horizon’s mortgage division during the Great Recession. The bank sold off its mortgage division and has been in recovery mode ever since. It is now providing mortgages for property owners in Tennessee.

Healthways executives have notified North Carolina officials that they plan to shut down a support center in a suburb of Raleigh, N.C., by the end of February. The move will cost 150 people their jobs, which is about 6 percent of the company's payroll.

The Triangle Business Journal says the 50,000-square-foot Morrisville site performed work primarily for BlueCross BlueShield of Massachusetts. Word of its closure comes six and a half years after the company said it would set up one of its care coordination centers in the Raleigh area. A company executive tells state representatives "changing business circumstances" are the reason it is closing down the facility.

Healthways has been able to announce numerous new contracts and extensions in the second half of this year, but its shares (Ticker: HWAY) took a tumble two months ago when CEO Ben Leedle told investors profitability would suffer as it built up its infrastructure for those jobs. The stock is still up about 50 percent this year.

Hospital medicine provider Cogent HMG has signed a contract with a North Carolina hospital system to take over the hospitalist program at its main 435-bed hospital. The program at Gaston Memorial Hospital will be home to more than 20 doctors and four mid-level providers.

Pierce Greenberg has taken a close look at why the International Bluegrass Music Association made the decision to move its signature World of Bluegrass event to Raleigh for the next three years. Some say the group needed to refresh its event, while IBMA officials say it'll be much cheaper for both the organization and attendees to gather in Carolina. But a deeper cultural tug-of-war inside the bluegrass community also has played a role in the move.

“There’s a difference between going to a bluegrass festival with folks sitting in chairs … or a festival [like Bonnaroo],” Jones said. “Are those two cultures going to mix? They are not going to mix. No matter how much peace, love, understanding and five-string banjo you sprinkle over them.”

Rex Healthcare, a Raleigh, N.C.-based system of nonprofit health care facilities operating under the UNC Health Care banner, is “broadening its relationship with Passport Health Communications, Inc.,” according to a Sept. 4 release.

Rex is adding the Franklin-based company’s eCare NEXT software product to the myriad of other “revenue cycle solution” offerings from Passport the company already uses. eCare Next addresses a provider’s administrative process at the patient admission stage and will “automate front end workflow, including insurance eligibility and demographic verification, precertification, patient registration quality, and patient payment estimation,” the release reads.  

“The financial health of our system impacts our ability to deliver quality care and improve outcomes for our patients,” said Joe Palumbo, Rex Healthcare’s director of patient access in the presser.

Rex also uses Passport’s PaymentSafe, an online bill payment technology. OrderRite is another one, a process for submitting and validating insurance precertifications. Both technologies are integrated with the eCare NEXT platform.

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.

Pathfinder Therapeutics has sold its image-guided surgery system to doctors at the University of North Carolina's main campus in Chapel Hill, who will use it for liver cancer surgery. Eight-year-old Pathfinder has received backing from several big-name investors and last month received some funding from the state's INCITE co-investment fund.

"We are very excited to announce this installation at the University of North Carolina, as we continue to expand our presence in the top tier cancer and transplant centers in the United States," said Jim Cloar, CEO of Pathfinder Therapeutics. "Sales momentum, and interest from around the world continues to build for Explorer."