From Washington, DC,

• Modern Healthcare reports,
  • “A powerful Senate committee plans to commence a bipartisan investigation into the Steward Health Care meltdown next week.
  • “The Senate, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will convene next Thursday for a vote to officially kick off a probe into the insolvent Dallas-based health system. Steward Health Care Chair and CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre will be subpoenaed to testify at a hearing Sept. 12, HELP Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and ranking member Dr. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said in a news release Thursday.
  • “Given the serious harm and uncertainty Steward’s bankruptcy and financial arrangements are having on hospitals, patients and healthcare workers throughout the country, Dr. de la Torre has given us no choice but to compel him to testify at this hearing,” Sanders and Cassidy said.
  • “De la Torre declined to attend a HELP Committee hearing last month and a subcommittee session in April.
  • “We have a number of questions to ask Dr. de la Torre about the bankruptcy of Steward Health Care and the financial arrangements leading up to its insolvency. It is time for Dr. de la Torre to answer them before Congress and the American people,” Sanders and Cassidy said.

• Federal News Network informs us,
  • “The Office of Personnel Management will soon be reopening enrollments into the government’s Flexible Spending Account program, FSAFEDS.
  • “OPM previously suspended all new enrollments in the program after a recent surge in fraudulent activity that impacted hundreds of federal employees with Flexible Spending Accounts. OPM’s inspector general said the suspension came “out of an abundance of caution,” and to try to prevent further fraud in the program.
  • “Enrollments in FSAFEDS, including any enrollments based on Qualifying Life Events (QLEs), will reopen Aug. 1, OPM wrote in an email to agency benefit officers Thursday afternoon, shared with Federal News Network. Also beginning Aug. 1, the program will transition to a “.gov” website domain, FSAFEDS.gov, rather than the current domain, FSAFEDS.com.
  • “Enrollees who missed a QLE deadline due to the pause on enrollments should still be able to make modifications once the enrollment pause is lifted, OPM said. Employees who are in that situation will have to call FSAFEDS at 877-372-3337 to request a change to the effective date for the QLE.
  • “Additionally, federal employees will be able to get reimbursed for any claims that were incurred after the effective date for the QLE, OPM said.
  • “OPM is also taking more long-term steps to address security concerns in FSAFEDS, including transitioning to Login.gov, the government’s platform for accessing government benefits and services online.”

• Per Govexec,
  • “The Office of Personnel Management wants federal agencies to let it know how many senior executives, scientific/professionals and other senior-level personnel they estimate they will need for the next two years.
  • “OPM outlined its biennial review of agency executive allocations in a July 10 memorandum, calling on agency and department heads to examine their potential Senior Executive Service needs through fiscal 2026 and 2027 and how they may have changed. 
  • “The biennial review, which is required by statute, will give agencies until Nov. 22 to fully outline their anticipated SES needs, but they must also detail the projections of their position needs in their Senior Level and Scientific/Professional pay systems by Aug. 23. 

From the public health and medical research front,

• Beckers Hospital Review tells us,
  • “The highest numbers of breast and cervical cancer deaths are found mostly in southeastern states, according to new data from the “2024 State Scorecard on Women’s Health and Reproductive Care” released July 18 by The Commonwealth Fund.
  • “The analysis is based on 2021-22 data from publicly available sources. Learn more about the methodology here.
  • “Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia had 23.2 to 27.8 breast and cervical cancer deaths per 100,000 female population, the highest numbers in the country.”

• The NIH Director, in her weekly blog, lets us know,
  • “Alzheimer’s disease is currently the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S. While your likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s-related cognitive impairment increases with age, risk for this disease and age of its onset depend on many factors, including the genes you carry. An intriguing new study suggests that having just one copy of a protective gene variant may be enough to delay cognitive impairment from this devastating disease in individuals who are otherwise genetically predisposed to developing early-onset Alzheimer’s dementia.
  • “The findings, from a study supported in part by NIH and reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, offer important insights into the genetic factors and underlying pathways involved in Alzheimer’s dementia. While much more study is needed, the findings have potential implications for treatments that could one day work like this gene variant does to delay or perhaps even prevent Alzheimer’s dementia.”

• The Washington Post reports,
  • “If you want to increase your odds of living a long and healthy life, watch less television and become more physically active, because even a small amount of physical activity can improve overall health, according to an observational study published last month in JAMA Network Open.
  • “While there have been many studies showing that moderate to vigorous physical activity is associated with healthy aging, researchers wanted to know if light physical activity compared with sedentary behaviors also improves healthy aging, and if not, how can people’s time be reallocated.
  • “They found that replacing a sedentary behavior such as watching TV with even low-intensity activity — such as standing or walking around while cooking or washing clothes — increased one’s odds of healthy aging. And at work, replacing some of the time spent sitting with simple movements such as standing or walking around the office can improve health.
  • “These findings indicate that physical activity need not be high intensity to potentially benefit various aspects of health, which have especially important public health implications as older people tend to have limited physical ability to engage in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity,” Molin Wang, an associate professor in epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and an author of the study, wrote in an email.”

• Per Medscape,
  • “An analysis based on a massive database of US electronic health records (EHRs) adds to evidence favoring the safety of glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) medications, finding no increased risk for many neurologic and psychiatric ailments when semaglutide was compared with other diabetes drugs.
  • “Riccardo De Giorgi, MD, DPhil, of the University of Oxford, Oxford, England, and colleagues published their research in eClinicalMedicine.”

• Bloomberg informs us,
  • “Opioids. They’re a public-health pariah, leading to more than 80,000 overdose deaths a year. Patients worry they’ll get addicted to them. Doctors want nothing to do with them. And politicians of all stripes are calling for less dangerous options for treating pain.
  • “We are looking for absolutely anything that’s not an opioid,” says Seth Waldman, an anesthesiologist and director of pain management at Hospital for Special Surgery, a top orthopedic medicine center.
  • “Against that backdrop, the success of a safer painkiller would seem assured. A new drug, which Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. is developing, has been hailed as a scientific breakthrough because it treats pain without entering the brain, where opioids create addicts. The drug, suzetrigine, met its goal this year in pivotal trials for acute pain and is poised to become the first new class of pain medication in more than two decades.
  • “But all that may not be enough to loosen the grip opioids have on American medicine. Despite their dismal reputation, they have two powerful things going for them: They’re cheap, and they work. The number of opioid prescriptions has been cut by half over the past decade, but some 130 million are still doled out each year.” * * *
  • “Vertex is betting the nonaddictive properties of its drug will make it an attractive alternative to opioids. But it isn’t leaving anything to chance. Knowing it faces an uphill battle commercially, the company last year boosted its lobbying spending almost 50%, to more than $3 million. Vertex is pressing Congress for new policies that remove “structural impediments” blocking access to opioid alternatives, says Stuart Arbuckle, its chief operating officer.
  • “Vertex has scored at least one legislative victory: The No Pain Act, which goes into effect next year, provides an extra Medicare reimbursement to hospitals that prescribe alternatives to opioids. Another bill introduced this year in Congress would prohibit step therapy and limit how much Medicare patients pay out of pocket for non-opioids.
  • “Other types of new drugs face this cost hurdle, too. The rollout of new contraceptives or antibiotics has been hampered by insurers guiding doctors and patients to older, less pricey meds. The difference is that those generics haven’t been declared a public-health emergency.”

• Mercer Consulting points out “four things employers need to know about summer heat.”

• The New York Times reports,
  • “A daily dose of a widely used antibiotic [doxycycline] can prevent some infections with syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia, potentially a new solution to the escalating crisis of sexually transmitted infections, scientists reported on Thursday.
  • “Their study was small and must be confirmed by more research. Scientists still have to resolve significant questions, including whether S.T.I.s might become resistant to the antibiotic and what effect it could have on healthy gut bacteria in people taking it every day.
  • “The approach would be recommended primarily to people at elevated risk of sexually transmitted infections during certain periods, said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, an infectious diseases physician at the University of Southern California who was not involved in the new work.
  • “The number of people who are really going to be offered this and take this is still very small,” he said. “In general, the more choices we have for people, the more prevention options we have, the better.”

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

• Per Fierce Pharma,
  • “GoodRx is joining forces with drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim to make its Humira biosimilar adalimumab available at an affordable price.
  • “The pharmaceutical company will offer citrate-free adalimumab-admb at a cash price available only on GoodRx, according to an announcement. This will allow anyone with a prescription to obtain the drug at one of 70,000 pharmacies nationwide, even if they’re uninsured.
  • “Beginning on July 18, Boehringer and GoodRx will offer high-concentration and low-concentration formulas of the drug in auto-injectors or pre-filled syringes at a price of $550 per two pack. The companies said that this is a 92% discount compared to a Humira prescription.”

• Per Beckers Hospital Review,
  • “The FDA is allowing Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. to temporarily import a syphilis drug that has been in shortage for more than a year. 
  • “Penicillin G benzathine injection fell into low supply in April 2023, and since then, clinicians have been rationing the product. In January, the FDA issued a temporary authorization for French drugmaker Laboratoires Delbert to import penicillin G benzathine. 
  • “On July 17, the FDA updated its post on the drug’s shortage. To address the scarcity, the agency cleared Cost Plus Drugs to import the medication from Laboratórios Atral.
  • “The Portugal-based drug company will export two presentations of Lentocilin (benzathine benzylpenicillin tetrahydrate), according to FDA documents.
  • “Cost Plus Drugs is selling this medication to healthcare businesses for less than $15, the company said in July 17 post on X.” 

• Segal Consulting relates,
  • “The average stop-loss coverage premium increase is 9.4 percent for the nearly 240 health plans in Segal’s 2024 national medical stop-loss dataset.”
  • “The average includes groups that increased specific stop-loss deductible levels and/or aggregating specific stop-loss deductibles resulting in an overall reduced rate action. The average premium increase for groups that maintained similar specific stop-loss benefit levels as the prior year is 11.5 percent.”

• Per Fierce Healthcare,
  • “Telehealth giant Teladoc is partnering with startup Brightline to extend virtual mental healthcare services for children, adolescents and their families.
  • “Through the partnership, members under the age of 18 will have access to Brightline’s behavioral health solutions through Teladoc’s virtual “front door,” the companies said.
  • “The collaboration with Brightline builds on Teladoc’s existing mental health offerings and expands access to care to members of all ages, a Teladoc spokesperson said.”

• Beckers Hospital Review identifies seven U.S. hospitals that have received brain tumor care certification by the Joint Commission.
  • Chippenham and Johnston-Willis Hospital, Richmond, VA
  • Hackensack (N.J.) University Medical Center Hackensack
  • Jewish Hospital, Cincinnati, OH
  • Pitt County Memorial Hospital, Greenville, N.C.
  • Santa Barbara (Calif.) Cottage Hospital
  • St. Vincent Hospital and Health Care Services, Indianapolis, IN
  • Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital – Fort Worth, TX

• Healthcare Dive lets us know,
  • “Humana has made a minority investment in Healthpilot, a company that aims to help beneficiaries choose Medicare plans, the insurer said Wednesday. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
  • “Healthpilot uses an artificial intelligence model to recommend Medicare Advantage, Medicare supplement and prescription drug plans based on enrollee information.
  • “Healthpilot will continue to recommend plans options from other payers following the investment, Humana said in the release.