From the public health front —

• STAT News reports,
  • “Ten years ago, clinicians in a handful of hospitals around the United States began sequencing the genomes of apparently healthy babies, seeking to understand how the technology might turn up hidden genetic disorders that aren’t being caught by routine newborn blood testing. New research from one such trial suggests the impact of having that kind of information extends far beyond the baby whose DNA is being decoded.
  • “In a study published Monday in the American Journal of Human Genetics, researchers from Mass General Brigham and Boston Children’s Hospital reported that of the first 159 infants to undergo screening through genomic sequencing, 17 were discovered to have unanticipated mutations in disease-associated genes.
  • “Over the next three to five years, in the majority of the 17 infants’ families, these discoveries prompted parents and other relatives to get additional testing that led to uncovering the cause of diseases running through their family trees. In three cases, mothers who learned they carried a gene that drastically elevated their risks of certain cancers chose to undergo prophylactic surgeries to reduce those risks — a finding that the lead researcher says undercuts ethical objections to informing families of genetic findings even when they aren’t immediately actionable for the newborn.
  • “This is a real-world rebuttal to the prevailing notion that we should not be sharing adult-onset disease-risk variants in children,” said Robert Green, a medical geneticist at Harvard and Brigham and Women’s Hospital who leads the BabySeq study that produced the new research. “There are ethicists who say a child should not be used as a genetic canary in a coal mine — that one member of a family should not be used without their consent as the access point for a whole family, but I’d like to challenge that. Look at these mothers. We arguably saved their lives. Are you really going to put that up against a theoretical loss of autonomy at some point in the child’s future?”

• Health Day tells us,
  • “Women who consistently adhered to mammography guidelines had better odds for survival if they were then diagnosed with breast cancer, study found.
  • “Delays in screening can contribute to being diagnosed with advanced disease.
  • “The findings were to be presented [last] Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago. Findings presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
  • “There has been much debate about when to start breast cancer screening, how often screening should occur, and how many screening exams are necessary. “This study suggests that a missed breast cancer screening has consequences,” said Dr. Arif Kamal, chief patient officer for the American Cancer Society.”

• The NIH Director discusses “Encouraging First-in-Human Results for a Promising [mRNA] HIV Vaccine.”

• As we enter the summer months, Bloomberg Prognosis provides insights into suncreens.

From the U.S. healthcare business front —

• STAT News and EndPoints offer fascinating interviews respectively with Susan Galbraith, head of AstraZeneca’s oncology research and development and Emma Walmsley, the Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) chief executive officer.

• Beckers Hospital Review ranks health systems by operating margins.

• The Wall Street Journal examines why “a growing group of physicians are ditching medicine’s traditional career path and hitting the road as temporary doctors-for-hire.”

• Kaiser Foundation News reports that doctors of osteopathy are filling the growing MD gap in rural areas of the U.S.

• MedCity News reports that “Doulas — who provide physical, emotional and informational support to expectant mothers — have shown to improve maternal health outcomes, but there’s little insurance coverage of their services. That’s starting to change, however, particularly in Medicaid programs.”

• Fierce Healthcare tells us,
  • “Evernorth has inked a strategic partnership with CarepathRx Health System Solutions that aims to boost access to specialty pharmacy care.
  • “Through the partnership, the two will provide integrated specialty pharmacy services to CHSS’ growing clientele, which includes more than 600 hospitals, health systems and physicians. This will allow these providers to diversify the ways they can support patients, according to an announcement.
  • “As part of the partnership, Evernorth will make a “significant minority investment” in CHSS that it expects to close late in the second quarter or in the third quarter of 2023.”
• and
  • “Humana’s primary care arm opened its 250th clinic in Dallas on Tuesday, marking another milestone in the insurer’s growth in the provider space.
  • “The Medicare Advantage giant has established a multiyear effort to continue scaling CenterWell and expects to open between 30 and 50 centers per year through 2025. In addition to the senior-focused primary care clinics, CenterWell also houses Humana’s home health business, another key strategic focus, and is sister to the Conviva Care Center brand.
  • “Collectively, Humana’s Primary Care Organization cares for 266,000 seniors across its markets.
  • “The ongoing expansion cements CenterWell as one of the country’s fastest-growing providers of value-based, senior-focused care. It operates clinics in 12 states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.”

From the litigation front —

• Roll Call tells us,
  • “Drugmaker Merck & Co. Inc. sued the federal government Tuesday, seeking an injunction against parts of last year’s reconciliation law that allow the Health and Human Services Department to negotiate for lower prices on [a certain subset of prescription] drugs.
  • “The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, argues that the negotiation program is “extortion” and violates the Fifth Amendment by not paying the company “just compensation” for its products.
  • “By coercing Merck to provide its drug products at government-set prices, the Program takes property for public use without just compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment,” Robert Josephson, Merck’s executive director of global media relations, said in a statement.”

• Beckers Payer Issues relates,
  • “A federal judge in St. Louis issued a preliminary injunction barring former Cigna executive Amy Bricker from working for CVS Health, while a lawsuit over her noncompete clause moves forward. 
  • “In the June 5 order, Judge Ronnie White said that Ms. Bricker is prohibited from providing any services to CVS Pharmacy, CVS Health, any of its entities or any other business that is “engaged in a business similar to, or that competes with, the business of Cigna.” She is also barred from disclosing Cigna trade secrets or confidential information.” 

From the miscellany / tidbits department

• The Society for Human Resource Management discusses steps that can be taken to help employees fill gaps in care and protect themselves against gun violence in the workplace.

• The Office of National Health Information Technology Coordinator released
  • “the draft USCDI+ Quality data element list for public comment on the eCQI Resource Center website. This release provides an initial, high-level picture of the USCDI+ initiative in action. It is a harmonized set of data elements for quality measurement that could be used to support measurement and reporting across a wide number of quality programs. ONC requests feedback on this draft list by 11:59pm ET on June 30, 2023, particularly its level of completeness, level of specificity, and the usefulness of companion guidance.
  • “The draft USCDI+ Quality is the most recent milestone for the USCDI+ initiative, which supports our federal agency partners to build on the USCDI standard adopted by ONC in 2020 and was first described in this blogfrom October 2021. The draft USCDI+ Quality includes data elements in the USCDI; however, as a core data set, the USCDI standard itself does not include each data element needed for quality measurement use cases. Through USCDI+ Quality, ONC is seeking to extend from the USCDI model to establish a consistent baseline of harmonized data elements for a wide range of CMS and other quality measurement use cases. Once mature, the USCDI+ Quality data element list can inform technical specifications and implementation guidance needed to enable more flexible, modernized, and robust approaches to standardizing and sharing data.”

• Fierce Healthcare adds,
  • “The roughly half of American smartphone users with iPhones will notice new health and privacy features on their devices starting today.
  • “In addition to iPhones being equipped with new health features, Apple’s update will give iPad and Apple Watch users access to new tools. All three platforms will gain features that encourage healthy behaviors, reduce the risk of myopia, or nearsightedness, and provide ways to assess and address depression, according to the company. The new features were announced as part of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2023Monday.
  • “By bringing the Health app to the iPad, the tech giant hopes to inspire even more Apple users to take a proactive approach to their health.
  • “Our goal is to empower people to take charge of their own health journey. With these innovative new features, we’re expanding the comprehensive range of health and wellness tools that we offer our users across iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch,” said Sumbul Desai, M.D., Apple’s vice president of Health, in a press release. “Mental health and vision health are important, but often overlooked, and we’re excited to introduce features that offer valuable new insights to provide users with an even better understanding of their health. These insights help support users in their daily decisions and offer more informed conversations with their doctors.”