From Washington, DC

• The Hill reports,
  • “The House on Wednesday advanced a GOP-backed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill, an effort by Republicans to pressure Democrats to end the partial government shutdown in the wake of the U.S. launching strikes against Iran.
  • “The panel voted 211-209 to pass the rule, which tees up debate and a vote on the final passage of the measure. The bill is expected to pass the lower chamber on Thursday.”

• Roll Call relates,
  • “The White House tentatively aims to release President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget proposal the week of March 30, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the plan.
  • “That timing would put budget delivery some eight weeks after the statutory due date of the first Monday in February, though presidential budgets often miss that deadline.
  • “Office of Management and Budget staff couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.”

• Federal News Network tells us,
  • “Agencies would make layoff decisions based more highly on federal employees’ performance, rather than how long they have been working in government, according to a new proposal from the Trump administration.
  • “If finalized, proposed regulations that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is expected to publish Thursday morning would reorder the factors that agencies consider when determining which employees to retain or remove during a reduction in force (RIF).
  • “When it comes to personnel decisions during RIFs, current federal regulations tell agencies to first look at employees’ tenure and length of service, before considering their performance ratings. The new proposed regulations seek to reverse that order, making employee performance the top priority.”

• Per an OPM news release,
  • “The US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) today announced the launch of NASA Force, a dedicated talent track within the US Tech Force initiative designed to recruit and deploy the nation’s top engineers and technologists to support America’s space program.
  • “NASA Force will identify and place high-impact technical talent into mission-critical roles supporting NASA’s exploration, research, and advanced technology priorities, ensuring the agency has the cutting-edge expertise needed to maintain US leadership in space.”

• Healthcare Dive informs us,
  • “Federal regulators received a record number of comments on their proposal to keep Medicare Advantage rates flat next year, Trump administration officials said Tuesday during an industry event, as insurers continue to lobby heavily for higher reimbursement.
  • “We appreciate all the input. I mean, obviously there’s been a little bit more input this year than we typically get,” John Brooks, the CMS’ chief policy and regulatory officer, said during the Better Medicare Alliance’s summit in Washington, D.C.
  • “In January, the Trump administration proposed an average rate bump of less than 0.1% for MA plans in 2027, along with tighter guardrails around how plans adjust for the health risks of their members.” * * *
  • “Regulators received almost 47,000 comments on the rule during the input period ended Feb. 25 — an all-time high, according to Brooks.
  • “In their comments, major MA carriers like UnitedHealth along with industry associations like the BMA and AHIP argued that the CMS ignored rising costs, resulting in a payment proposal underfunding MA.”
• and
  • “The CMS innovation center is exploring more mandatory payment models as the Trump administration brainstorms how to get more providers to participate in value-based care, health officials said Tuesday.
  • “Mandatory models are going to have to be part of the equation,” CMMI Director Abe Sutton said at a conference hosted by value-based care advocacy group Accountable for Health.
  • “The CMMI tests ways of injecting more value-based care into federal programs through its models, which can be mandatory or voluntary. Mandatory models require all eligible participants — usually providers — to take part. Participants generally can’t exit the model before the testing period is up.
  • “That’s opposed to voluntary models, in which accountable care organizations or other actors can opt into participation.” * * *
  • “The CMMI started trialing more mandatory models during the first Trump administration, a direction that continued under President Joe Biden. Now, the second Trump administration is once again reiterating its support of expanded mandatory tests.”

• Cardiovascular Business points out,
  • “The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has released a list 2,600 cardiologists who will be required to participate in a new Ambulatory Specialty Model (ASM) payment model for heart failure starting on Jan. 1, 2027.
  • “CMS said the new program aims to improve prevention and upstream management of high-cost chronic diseases with an initial push in heart failure and lower back pain. The new payment model is an attempt to reduce avoidable hospitalizations and unnecessary procedures. Heart failure is a major driver of Medicare expenses, and currently costs the U.S. health system about $179.5 billion annually.[1]
  • “Participation in the ASM will be mandatory for certain specialists who commonly treat these conditions in Medicare patients in an outpatient setting. The ASM will begin on Jan. 1, 2027, and run for five performance years through Dec. 31, 2031.”

• Beckers Hospital Review notes,
  • “For the third time since March 2025, HHS has postponed a planned meeting for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which provides clinical preventive health recommendations to Congress every year. 
  • “The USPSTF, which is a volunteer panel of national experts that was launched in 1984, usually meets three times a year. The group did not meet in July or in November of 2025, with the latter tied to a government shutdown. * * *
  • “An HHS spokesperson confirmed the March 2026 meeting’s postponement to Becker’s, adding that the meeting “will be rescheduled in the coming months.”

From the Food and Drug Administration front,

• BioPharma Dive reports,
  • “Food and Drug Administration officials are giving Prime Medicine new hope for a gene-editing treatment the company was forced to shelve last year.
  • “The therapy, PM359, is designed to treat chronic granulomatous disease, or CGD, a potentially deadly condition that leaves patients highly susceptible to bacterial and fungal infections. A study of two patients released last year suggested PM359 could correct the genetic anomaly that causes the disease, offering the possibility of a cure.
  • “But the condition is so rare that Prime opted not to continue development of the therapy amid a cash crunch. Even as it announced the promising early results, Prime said it would deprioritize PM359 and focus on other programs after cutting a quarter of its staff. On Tuesday, Prime said it now sees the possibility of approval based on the two-patient study alone.”

From the judicial front,

• STAT News reports,
  • “For the fourth time, federal auditors have turned up improper or potentially improper Medicaid payments in every sample of autism therapy records they audited. This report, focused on Colorado, yielded the highest improper payment amount yet. 
  • “The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General uncovered $285.2 million in improper and potentially improper payments in 2022 and 2023 to clinicians who provide a popular form of autism therapy called applied behavior analysis, or ABA. The payments, administered under Colorado’s Medicaid program, come from the state and federal governments. 
  • “HHS OIG announced in 2022 it would conduct reviews of Medicaid payments to ABA providers in seven states. The first was Indiana, then Wisconsin, and Maine. ABA is a commonly used therapy for managing autism symptoms, but a 2022 STAT investigation found that a rapid influx of private equity investment in the industry has contributed to a crisis of providers routinely overbilling insurers while providing substandard treatment to vulnerable children and families.” 

From the public health and medical / Rx research front,

• The Washington Post reports,
  • Heard about a lot of people getting flu this winter but not much about covid?
  • It’s not just you. For the second winter in a row, the United States has faced a punishing flu season, with covid as a more muted threat.
  • Early in the covid pandemic, coronavirus proved far more transmissibleand deadly as it ripped through the world than the flu typically was. Flu was almost nonexistent that first pandemic winter in 2020-2021.
  • Now that SARS-CoV-2 is no longer a novel virus sweeping through a population with little immunity, covid and influenza illnesses are becoming more similar, with a key difference: Coronavirus circulates year-round and ticks up in the summer, when flu is gone.
  • “Does that mean flu is now the woe of the winter, and covid is the scourge of the summer? It’s complicated and too soon to say.”
    
• The American Hospital Association relates,
  • “The U.S. maternal mortality rate fell to 17.9 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2024, statistically similar to the 2023 rate of 18.6 per 100,000, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC reported that the maternal mortality rate for Black women in 2024 was 44.8 deaths per 100,000 live births, significantly higher than rates for white (14.2), Hispanic (12.1) and Asian (18.1) women. 
  • “The AHA is committed to safeguarding mothers and babies by eliminating maternal mortality and reducing maternal morbidity. For more on members’ efforts, including case studies, podcasts, webinars and other resources, visit the AHA’s Better Health for Mothers and Babies Initiative webpage.” 

• The New York Times tells us,
  • “The doctor kept hearing the same story from his patients. After taking GLP-1 weight-loss drugs and finally shedding those excess pounds, some had gone a bit rogue. They began spacing out the shots instead of injecting themselves every week.
  • “And it seemed to be working, said Dr. Mitch Biermann, an obesity and internal medicine specialist at Scripps Clinic in San Diego.
  • “By the time the third person told me they were taking it every second or third week and still maintaining their weight, I started recommending it to other patients,” he said.
  • “Dr. Biermann also conceived a study to test the strategy. Now the results of that research are in: After 36 weeks of follow-up, most of the patients who spaced out their GLP-1 injections kept the weight off and also maintained health benefits like reduced blood pressure and better blood sugar control.
  • “Only four patients gained weight after making the switch, and they quickly reverted back to weekly injections, the report said.
  • “The study was small, only 34 patients in a relatively homogeneous group — mostly white and privately uninsured. And it was done by analyzing their existing medical charts.
  • “Still, the research, published in February in the journal Obesity, provides a potentially appealing new option for patients who are loath to commit to lifelong weekly injections of a costly medication that may not be covered by insurance and that some fear could have unknown side effects.”

• Medscape informs us,
  • “Viral and bacterial infections’ overlapping symptoms and signs can complicate RSV diagnosis and lead to unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions.
  • “In this study, children who had RSV detected via a rapid antigen test had a 48% lower likelihood of receiving antibiotics within 14 days of diagnosis.
  • ‘Overall, 20% of the kids who tested positive for RSV received at least one antibiotic prescription compared with 40% of those testing negative.”
• and
  • “Alzheimer’s brain changes progressed up to 20 times faster in women with Alzheimer’s and alpha-synuclein co-pathology compared with men, a cohort study showed.” * * *
  • “The findings suggest that when alpha-synuclein — a protein associated with Parkinson’s and other Lewy body diseases — accumulates alongside Alzheimer’s pathology, it may drive faster Alzheimer’s progression in women.”
    
• Health Day points out,
  • “A frequently prescribed atrial fibrillation drug might interact with blood thinners
  • “Diltiazem had a higher rate of serious bleeding events when taken with blood thinners like apixaban or rivaroxaban
  • “Diltiazem interacts with enzymes that play a role in the metabolism of the blood thinners.”

• Per an NIH news release,
  • “A research team funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has developed a versatile machine learning model that could one day greatly expand what medical scans can tell us about disease. Scientists used their tool, named Merlin, to assess 3D abdominal computed tomography (CT) scans, accomplishing tasks as simple as identifying anatomical features to as complex as predicting disease onset years in advance. Despite being developed as a general-purpose CT model, Merlin surpassed a gauntlet of similar automated tools in tasks they were specifically built to handle.
  • “The team trained their model on a unique set of patient CT scans linked to radiology reports and medical diagnosis codes collected from the Stanford University School of Medicine. The researchers note that it is the largest collection of abdominal CT data to date.  
  • “Rich datasets like this are necessary to push the limits of what artificial intelligence models can accomplish in medicine,” said Bruce Tromberg, Ph.D., director of NIH’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB). “This work exemplifies how meticulously crafted training data can enable remarkable insights that significantly streamline workflows and assist in clinical decision-making.” 

• Genetic Engineering and BioTechnology News adds,
  • “Life is governed by tiers of gene regulation, driven by modulation of RNA polymerase (RNAP) by transcription factors. The second tier is composed of cell signaling cascades and feedback loops. Dissecting gene regulation requires distinguishing transcription factor targets from indirect network effects. 
  • “A new study by The Rockefeller University published in Molecular Cell titled, “Cell-free genomics reveals fundamental regulatory principles of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis transcription cycle,” has revealed fundamental features of the transcription cycle in the bacteria that causes tuberculosis. The study informs the development of new drugs.
  • “Gaining a deep understanding of how transcription works reveals central principles in biology that have huge significance for human health,” said Elizabeth Campbell, PhD, head of the Laboratory of Molecular Pathogenesis at The Rockefeller and corresponding author of the paper. “We can more precisely design therapeutics to target a process if we truly understand it.” 

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

• Beckers Payer Issues reports,
  • “In recent months, payers across the country have tried tightening policies to get a better grip on evaluation/management coding.
  • “While payers often say the policies aim to control costs or combat fraud, these more restrictive policies are often met with provider backlash. [You will find in the article] three insurer policies from the past few months — and where they stand.

• Fierce Healthcare relates,
  • “Even as its inpatient occupancy surged near the end of 2025, the nation’s largest for-profit hospital system said it has generally managed to avoid revenue-limiting capacity constraints and should continue to do so through 2026 even as its volumes grow. 
  • “HCA Healthcare, with its stock sitting at an all-time pricing high, pleased investors earlier this year when announcing a better-than-expected fourth-quarter performance and bullish 2026 guidance despite hundreds of millions in expected headwinds due to changes in Medicaid policy. 
  • “But, while that quarter’s same-facility equivalent admissions rose 2.5% over the prior year, in line with expectations, its inpatient surgeries remained flat while its outpatient surgical volume dipped by about 1.5%. At the same time, its hospitals were filled to about 73% to 74% capacity, a historical high point that could place strains on the operating efficiency of hospitals pulling the average upward.”

• Beckers Hospital Review tells us,
  • “Grand Forks, N.D.-based Altru has acquired CHI St. Alexius Health Devils Lake (N.D.) — a 25-bed critical access hospital — from Chicago-based CommonSpirit. The hospital is now known as Altru Hospital Devils Lake, according to a March 2 Altru news release. 
  • “This transition represents an opportunity to make a meaningful difference in the lives of those we serve,” Altru CEO Todd Forkel said in the release. “Over the next several months, we will be expanding services and enhancing care offerings to better meet the needs of this important community.” 
  • “Altru is also in the process of acquiring three more hospitals from CommonSpirit. In January, Altru signed a nonbinding agreement to acquire CHI St. Alexius Health in Bismarck, CHI St. Alexius Health Turtle Lake and CHI St. Alexius Health Garrison (N.D.). If finalized, the move would expand Altru’s footprint further west in North Dakota.
  • “CommonSpirit is also in talks with Pittsburgh-based UPMC to sell Trinity Health System — a three-hospital network based in Steubenville, Ohio. CommonSpirit CFO Michael Browning said on the system’s March 2 investor call that both deals, if approved, could close in 2026.”
• and
  • “Academic health systems posted a wide range of operating performance in 2025 and early fiscal 2026, with margins spanning from negative territory to double digits. While strong investment returns buoyed bottom lines at many organizations, core operations remain under strain from rising labor, supply and drug costs.
  • “Across these systems, operating margins spanned from -2.6% to 10.7%, highlighting the uneven financial recovery taking shape in academic healthcare. Many organizations saw stronger net income driven by investment returns and nonoperating gains, even as core operating performance remained thin. Expense growth — particularly labor, supplies and drug costs — continues to pressure margins, while scale, integration and restructuring efforts are increasingly shaping financial trajectories across academic healthcare.
  • “{The article shows] how 12 major academic and nonprofit systems stack up based on their most recent financial reports. 

• Health Day informs us,
  • “Telemedicine appointments aren’t only more convenient, but actually save money for both patients and health care systems, a new study says.
  • “Telemedicine visits are five times less costly than in-person appointments for the most common conditions, researchers recently reported in JAMA Network Open.
  • “On average, telemedicine patients are billed $400 less, researchers found, and are less likely to need follow-up visits after their first appointment.
  • “Before we did this study, there was a common concern that telemedicine might serve only as an easy source of ‘first aid,’ just delaying in-person care and increasing costs overall,” said co-senior researcher Dr. David Asch, senior vice president for strategic initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania.
  • “But we found that wasn’t true, and our work suggests that for many patients, telemedicine can be a complete solution, not just a temporary band-aid,” he said in a news release.”

• Per Fierce Pharma,
  • “The primary growth drivers in Bayer’s pharma sector—Nubeqa and Kerendia—are performing even better than the company anticipated and their momentum is expected to continue in 2026. But that won’t lead to growth of Bayer’s pharma business overall this year as two contraction drivers—Xarelto and Eylea—are working in the opposite direction. 
  • “This will be the last year of the sector’s “resilience phase,” Bayer’s pharma president Stefan Oelrich said during a quarterly conference call, which will set it up for growth in 2027.”
  • “In a way, Bayer’s pharma business is the company in a microcosm. As the German conglomerate absorbs massive litigation charges related to its disastrous acquisition of Monsanto a decade ago and eyes a potential $7.25 billion settlement of Roundup lawsuits, a rebound is finally in sight.”
    
• Per Fierce Healthcare,
  • “Eldercare company Papa is rolling out a new program that leans on its existing companion care services to support quality improvements for health plans.
  • “Called Papa Plus, the company’s network of vetted “Pals” will be able to provide key services that insurers need in addition to their work in addressing social needs of members. These tasks could include assisting a member in scheduling a key wellness visit and then accompanying them to the appointment, providing support after hospital discharge or helping an individual use a telehealth visit.
  • “This builds a direct engagement channel to some of the most vulnerable—and least reachable—patients, Papa said in the announcement, which was shared exclusively with Fierce Healthcare.”