• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- Dakotas-based Sanford Health is spending $30 million on a system to track every patient, employee and piece of hospital equipment in its system.
• Patient wristbands and employee badges soon will include a chip that will communicate with the tracking system by sensors mounted on walls in rooms and hallways. Equipment such as gurneys, wheelchairs, surgical devices and intravenous pumps will be tagged for instant tracking.
• The software is from Intelligent InSites, a Fargo, N.D., business that's designed tracking systems for 70 customers in 150 locations.
• Sanford will phase in the technology within five years, starting with a clinic in Moorhead, Minn. It eventually will cover Sanford's 126-city, nine-state network.
• Sanford is based in Fargo and Sioux Falls, S.D. It bills itself as the nation's largest not-for-profit rural health care provider.
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• LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- The killing of a female mountain lion has automatically ended the year's second season in the Panhandle area where it was taken.
• The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission says the 102-pound animal was killed Wednesday in Sheridan County. The commission says the animal was about 5½ years old and didn't show any signs of recent motherhood. One of its ears had a tag from South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks.
• Season 2 in the Pine Ridge Unit was scheduled to run from Feb. 15 through March 31, with a requirement to end once one female or two mountain lions total were killed.
• The first season in the Pine Ridge Unit closed when two male mountain lions were killed on Jan. 2. The season is continuing in the Prairie Unit.
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• PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard has signed into law a measure aimed at keeping banned gamblers out of Deadwood casinos.
• Existing law already gives the South Dakota Gaming Commission authority to

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