From Washington DC, where the air quality index was code red today —

• The Supreme Court is down to its final four pending decisions from the October 2022 term. The final decision day is tomorrow morning

• The EEOC Chair made the following noteworthy comment on today’s Supreme Court decision on affirmation action in college admissions:
  • “Today’s Supreme Court decision effectively turns away from decades of precedent and will undoubtedly hamper the efforts of some colleges and universities to ensure diverse student bodies. That’s a problem for our economy because businesses often rely on colleges and universities to provide a diverse pipeline of talent for recruitment and hiring.  Diversity helps companies attract top talent, sparks innovation, improves employee satisfaction, and enables companies to better serve their customers”.
  • “However, the decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina does not address employer efforts to foster diverse and inclusive workforces or to engage the talents of all qualified workers, regardless of their background. It remains lawful for employers to implement diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs that seek to ensure workers of all backgrounds are afforded equal opportunity in the workplace.”

• Govexec tells us
  • “The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against the U.S. Postal Service in its attempts to require any employee to work on Sundays, even when it conflicted with their religious observances. 
  • “In a unanimous decision [interpreting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964], the top court reversed decades of precedent in determining that employers like USPS have to demonstrate more than a de minimis burden to avoid their otherwise mandated obligations to provide reasonable religious accommodations. The justices sent the case back to a lower court to determine whether, given the specifics of the case, the Postal Service could come up with other means to keep a letter carrier on the payroll without requiring him to work on Sundays.”

From the public health front —

• The American Hospital Association informs us
  • “As proposed by its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [(CDC)] today recommended a single dose of the GSK or Pfizer Respiratory Syncytial Virus vaccine for people aged 60 and older who decide with their health care provider that the vaccine would benefit them. The Food and Drug Administration last month approved the vaccines for use in individuals 60 and older. The first U.S.-licensed vaccines to protect against RSV, they are expected to be available this fall.”

• The CDC announced
  • “CDC Director Rochelle P. Walensky, M.D., M.P.H. adopted the 2023-2024 Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ (ACIP) recommendations on annual influenza (flu) vaccination for everyone 6 months and older in the United States on June 27, 2023.  There were small changes to the annual recommendations around flu vaccination, including an acknowledgement of the updated flu vaccine composition for the 2023-2024 flu season and a change in the recommendations for vaccination of people with egg allergies. Dr. Walensky’s adoption of the ACIP recommendations makes them official CDC policy. * * *
  • The recommended timing of flu vaccination has not changed. September and October are the best times for most people to get vaccinated.

• The Department of Health and Human Services announced
  • “[Its] Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH) is releasing a draft framework to support and accelerate smoking cessation, building on supports that are already in place for people who want to quit. This framework will be a roadmap to enhance collaboration and coordination across HHS—and with federal and nonfederal stakeholders—to drive further progress toward smoking cessation and to deliver equitable outcomes for all persons in America. HHS is seeking public input on the framework before it is finalized.
  • “The public comment period will be open for 30 days starting June 30, 2023, through July 30 at 11:59 PM ET. HHS is committed to transparency and providing opportunities for public participation during the development of the Framework.
  • “Anyone can comment. Each responding entity (person or organization) is requested to submit only one response via email to HHSSmokingCessationFramework2023@hhs.gov as a Word document, Portable Document Format (PDF), or in the body of an email. Please include “Request for Information: Draft HHS 2023 Framework to Support and Accelerate Smoking Cessation” in the subject line of the email message.”

• The Society for Human Resource Management offers employers strategies for reducing record-level employee stress.

• Roll Call reports
  • “Only one-third of individuals diagnosed with hepatitis C have been cured in the decade since cures for the disease became available, according to a study published Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
  • “Hepatitis C is a viral inflammation of the liver that can be asymptomatic yet spread through blood or other bodily fluids. Without treatment, hepatitis C is a chronic condition that can lead to liver cancer, liver failure or other comorbidities. 
  • “The Food and Drug Administration approved the first highly effective direct-acting antiviral drugs to cure hepatitis C in 2013. Treatment occurs over the course of 8 to 12 weeks and has a 95 percent success rate.
  • “But almost 15,000 Americans still die from hepatitis C annually. * * *
  • “Francis Collins, the former longtime NIH director who leads the White House National Hepatitis C Elimination Program, said the data “highlights an urgency for a bold response to hepatitis C.”

From the health plan design front

• Fierce Healthcare discusses
  • “Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the rising tide of mental health concerns—particularly among children and adolescents—has been a major focus in the industry.
  • “But it’s not a new problem. Behavioral health needs have been on the rise for some time, and that’s why in 2018 the team at Elevance Health’s Carelon established the Suicide Prevention Program, which deploys data and predictive models to identify people at risk sooner and avoid potential self-harm or suicide events. 
  • “Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for young people, and rates have increased by 56% in the last 20 years. Through the prevention program, Carelon saw a reduction of more than 20% in suicidal events among adolescents and young adults with commercial coverage.
  • I”n addition, this corresponded to a 30% decrease in per member per month behavioral health spending.”

• The Society for Human Resource Management identifies four ways to boost employee satisfaction with high deductible plans connected with health savings accounts.

From the generative AI front,

• Beckers Hospital Review notes,
  • “Johnson City, Tenn.-based Ballad Health is using artificial intelligence to identify potential medication errors and improve pharmacy workflows, the health system said June 29. 
  • “Ballad is using a medication safety monitoring platform from MedAware for this effort. The platform monitors drug prescriptions in real-time and compares this information against patient data from the health system’s EHR to flag potentially dangerous or fatal drug interactions. 
  • “The Ballad Health Innovation Center and Ballad Ventures, the system’s venture capital subsidiary, is funding the project with MedAware.

From the healthcare spending front —

• Healthcare Dive relates
  • “Healthcare costs are expected to rise 7% next year as inflation drives providers to seek rate increases from insurers and pharmaceutical costs rise, according to PwC’s annual report.
  • “The consultancy, which surveyed actuaries at insurers that offer group and individual plans, said the increase outstrips its predictions for 2022 and 2023, which were 5.5% and 6% respectively.
  • “Some trends are pushing costs down, like the availability of more biosimilar drugs and a shift toward cheaper outpatient care. A number of other factors are expected to be cost neutral but key to watch, including health plans’ investment in value-based care, COVID-19 impacts, behavioral healthcare utilization, health equity initiatives, price transparency rules and Medicaid redeterminations, PwC said.

• and
  • “Primary care physicians saw their compensation rise faster than other medical and surgical specialties in 2022, as significant E/M coding changes enacted by the CMS kicked into gear and volume stabilized coming out of the pandemic.
  • “Medical groups and healthcare organizations reported a 6.1% increase in primary care compensation in 2022 compared to 2021 in the AMGA’s most recent compensation survey published on Wednesday. That’s compared to 1.5% and 1.6% increases for medical and surgical specialties, respectively.
  • “Medical groups’ revenue increased faster than compensation gains for physicians, a trend the AMGA said could be due to groups using more revenue to address higher expenses as supply and labor costs soared.”

• Health Payer Intelligence points out
  • “Individuals with depression, anxiety, or both who are enrolled in large employer-sponsored health plans have higher out-of-pocket spending than individuals without such diagnoses, according to an issue brief from the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker.
  • “These findings of higher health spending among privately insured individuals receiving treatment for depression and/or anxiety come at a time of rising health costs. Health insurance is already expensive for enrollees with private insurance, and treatment for mental health conditions can further escalate these costs,” the brief noted.
  • “The researchers used large employer health plan claims from the 2021 MerativeMarketScan Commercial Database. Nine percent of adult, large employer-sponsored health plan enrollees had a depression or anxiety diagnosis or both.
  • “Members with a generalized anxiety disorder (anxiety) diagnosis, a depression diagnosis, or both spent, on average, $1,501 per year in out-of-pocket costs. This was nearly double the $863 in average annual out-of-pocket healthcare spending that individuals without one of these diagnoses spent.
  • “Moreover, total annual spending, including out-of-pocket healthcare costs, was 1.9 times higher for individuals with one of these diagnoses than those without one. Utilization was also twice as high for those diagnosed, who typically visited a provider’s office 7.4 times per year, while those without a diagnosis visited 3.2 times per year on average.
    

From the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) front —

• The Wall Street Journal reports
  • “The promise of gene therapy has arrived for thousands of Americans with the most common and severe form of hemophilia.
  • “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first gene therapy for hemophilia A on Thursday, giving patients a long-awaited option for avoiding the burden of regular infusions and injections.
  • “That’s a complete game-changer for quality of life,” said Mike Reutershan, a 38-year-old medicinal chemist with hemophilia who lives in suburban Boston. “You don’t have to carry a bag of medicine around with you.” 
  • “The FDA approved the new gene therapy, called Roctavian and made by BioMarin Pharmaceutical, for adults with a severe form of the disease. Roctavian is infused just once.  
  • “Priced at $2.9 million, the drug now ranks among the most expensive in the world. But the price is in line with the cost of other new gene therapies, a groundbreaking type of treatment that replaces a missing or faulty gene.”

• Cardiovascular Business informs us
  • “Just eight days after approving the first anti-inflammatory drug for cardiovascular disease, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has made another historic approval focused on cardiovascular health. 
  • “The agency announced Wednesday, June 29, that it has approved donislecel, a new pancreatic islet cellular therapy made from the pancreatic cells of deceased donors, for the treatment of type 1 diabetes among adult patients with severe hypoglycemia. Donislecel is marketed and sold by Chicago-based CellTrans under the brand name Lantidra. 
  • “This represents the first time the FDA has approved a cellular therapy for type 1 diabetes.”
• Biopharma Dive calls attention to ten clinical trials to watch in the second half of this year.