From Washington, DC

• Federal News Network reports,
  • “In the coming months, the Office of Personnel Management is expected to release a reworked version of its employee viewpoint survey that’s more focused on granular data and delivering realtime feedback.
  • “OPM Director Scott Kupor said his agency has been refining the survey to focus more on micro-level questions in order to more effectively gauge employee opinion.
  • “The goal is to get to a decision on what the kind of new survey format looks like so that we have time to do something over the course of this fiscal year for sure,” Kupor told Federal News Network in an interview Wednesday.”

• Fedweek outlines the FEHB/PSHB eligibility rules for children.
  • “Both the Federal Employees Health Benefits program and Postal Service Health Benefits program, provide for coverage of spouses and children in their self plus one and family options. While enrollment changes typically happen during the open season each autumn, there are certain life events that involve adding children—for example from self plus one to self and family on the birth or adoption of a child.
  • “In both cases, it’s important to know who qualifies for coverage as a child, and when that may end.’

• Thompson Reuters notes,
  • “QUESTION: We recall that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires insured group health plans to satisfy nondiscrimination rules similar to those that apply to self-insured plans under Code § 105(h) (the eligibility and benefit tests). What is the status of those rules? Are employers that sponsor insured plans required to comply with them, and if so, when?
  • “ANSWER: Under the ACA, insured group health plans generally must satisfy the nondiscrimination rules of Code § 105(h)(2), including “rules similar to” those in Code § 105(h) regarding nondiscriminatory eligibility, nondiscriminatory benefits, and controlled groups. The Code § 105(h) rules pre-date the ACA, prohibit certain discrimination in favor of highly compensated individuals, and apply only to self-insured health plans. The ACA applied similar requirements to insured plans, other than those that provide only excepted benefits or qualify for grandfathered status.
  • “Although insured group health plans initially were required to comply with the ACA nondiscrimination rules for plan years beginning on or after September 23, 2010, the IRS announced in Notice 2011-1 that compliance is not required until the agencies issue regulations or other guidance regarding how the rules apply to insured plans. To date, the agencies have not issued such regulations or guidance, so sanctions for failure to comply do not yet apply for insured plans. Note that the Code § 105(h) nondiscrimination rules continue to apply to self-insured health plans, including those that provide excepted benefits or are grandfathered. For example, the Code § 105(h) nondiscrimination rules continue to apply to health FSAs”.

• Per an HHS news release,
  • “Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced an Interim Final Rule (IFR) extending, for one-year, the compliance dates that recipients of HHS funding must meet for conforming web content and mobile applications to specific accessibility standards under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504).
  • “Under the revised timeline:
    • “Recipients with 15 or more employees will now have until May 11, 2027, to comply.
    • “Recipients with fewer than 15 employees will now have until May 10, 2028, to comply.

From the Food and Drug Administration front,

• Fierce Pharma reports,
  • “After a surprise rejection at the beginning of 2026, the FDA has agreed to reconsider a T-cell therapy based on the same single-arm trial that the agency had previously found problematic.
  • “For Pierre Fabre Pharmaceuticals and Atara Biotherapeutics’ Ebvallo, the FDA agreed during a recent meeting that a single-arm study using an appropriate historical control “could serve as an adequate and well controlled study” in support of an application for approval, the two companies said Thursday.
  • “Pierre Fabre and Atara are aiming to get Ebvallo, also known as tabelecleucel or tab-cel, approved for patients with relapsed or refractory Epstein-Barr virus-positive post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease (EBV+PTLD) who have failed on an anti-CD20 regimen. Before the FDA, European regulators had already greenlighted the immunotherapy for the indication in 2022.”

• MedPage Today adds,
  • “The FDA expanded the approvalopens in a new tab or window of ustekinumab (Stelara) in Crohn’s disease to include the treatment of kids as young as 2 years, Johnson & Johnson announced.”
• and
  • “An investigational trivalent mRNA-based vaccine reduced confirmed flu illness by 26.6% through the end of the flu season compared with approved standard-dose vaccines in a randomized trial among adults ages 50 and older.
  • “The mRNA vaccine led to more adverse events, particularly injection-site pain and fatigue, but most were transient and mild without an excess of more serious risks.
  • “An FDA decision on approval is expected by August.”

From the public health and medical / Rx research front,

• The Washington Post reports,
  • “Using the blood of a 56-year-old woman vaccinated against measles, scientists have isolated a fighting force of four potent virus-blocking antibodies that could pave the way toward a treatment for people exposed to the highly contagious respiratory disease making a comeback in the United States.
  • “A safe, highly effective vaccine for measles has been available since the 1960s, and the U.S. officially eliminated the disease in 2000, with sporadic cases and outbreaks. But dropping vaccination rates have sparked large outbreaks in multiple states, and the country is edging closer to the virus spreading freely again—which puts more people at risk.
  • “New ways to block or treat measles would be particularly important for people who are immunocompromised and babies under the age of 1, because they are not eligible for the vaccine, leaving them unprotected amid a growing number of cases.
  • “Measles was a problem that was solved. Until it wasn’t solved anymore,” said Erica Ollmann Saphire, president of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology who led the study published Thursday in the journal Cell Host & Microbe. But she and other scientists stressed that this approach was not a substitute for a vaccine.
  • “The treatment is always going to be more expensive than the vaccine. It’s the best bang for your public-health buck — this is for people that couldn’t be vaccinated,” Saphire said.”

• MedPage Today adds, “A new systematic review in The BMJ reported that current evidence did not support causal associations between aluminium adjuvanted vaccines and serious or long-term health outcomes.“

• Infectious Disease Advisor notes,
  • “HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) uptake remains suboptimal among commercially-insured adolescents and young adults in the United States, highlighting the need for targeted interventions to address access barriers.”

• The American Medical Association lets us know what doctors wish their patients knew about swimmer’s ear.
  • “Diving into pools or spending the day at the beach or lake can be the epitome of summer fun, but these aquatic adventures can also come with an unwelcome companion: otitis externa, commonly known as swimmer’s ear. This common affliction can sideline even the most dedicated water enthusiasts with its painful consequences. With the incidence of swimmer’s ear rising during the warmer months, understanding its causes, symptoms and prevention methods is essential for water enthusiasts of all ages.” 

• The National Institute for Health Care Management’s May newletter discusses “Cancer Trends & Treatment Advancements”

• Per BioPharma Dive,
  • “CellCentric, a biotechnology company developing an experimental drug for multiple myeloma, announced Wednesday it raised a $220 million Series D round to finance mid- and late-stage trials.
  • “Its lead drug, dubbed inobrodib, is an oral medicine that blocks a pair of proteins called “p300” and “CBP,” which in turn prevents the expression of certain key cancer-driving genes. CellCentric believes the treatment might be useful as an additive therapy across different lines of care in multiple myeloma. 
  • “The biotech is testing inobrodib in an all-oral combination involving Bristol Myers Squibb’s Pomalyst, as well as in conjunction with bispecific antibodies for myeloma such as Pfizer’s Elrexfio and Johnson & Johnson’s Tecvayli. It’s also evaluating use in a “maintenance” setting, where treatments are used to keep cancer from returning.”

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

• Beckers Payer Issues reports,
  • “Blue Shield of California debuted its virtual-first Virtual Blue healthcare plan just over three years ago. Now, the data is rolling in.
  • “The program began in 2023 through a collaboration with tech-enabled healthcare platforms Accolade — now owned by Transcarent — and TeleMed2U. The program has no out-of-pocket costs for visits with virtual-only providers, can often deliver same-day care and now has more than 150,000 members. Blue Shield is even tacking virtual primary care options onto its Trio HMO plan, expanding offerings into the individual market.
  • “Tim Lieb, Blue Shield of California’s senior vice president of commercial markets, recently joined the “Becker’s Payer Issues Podcast” to discuss Virtual Blue’s early strengths and challenges.”

• Healthcare Dive relates,
  • “Nearly 8 in 10 employers report GLP-1 drugs are driving heightened healthcare costs at their companies, pushing some to consider dropping coverage of the pricey weight loss medications, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Business Group on Health.
  • “Only 72% of employers that cover GLP-1s for weight management said they’d likely maintain that coverage next year, while 10% reported they likely wouldn’t, according to the group, which represents employers that provide health coverage. 
  • “Additionally, 87% of respondents said new oral versions of GLP-1 drugs would result in higher demand for the medications, but only 9% predicted prices would decrease.”
• and
  •  Providing hospital-level care in patients’ homes was linked to better clinical outcomes, suggesting hospital-at-home programs could serve as a safe and efficient alternative to traditional inpatient care, according to a study published this week in JAMA Network Open. 
  • Hospital at home was associated with decreased emergency department use within 30 days of discharge and lower in-hospital mortality, according to the research. But patients at hospital-at-home programs saw no significant difference in hospital readmissions within 30 days. 
  • Additionally, adoption of hospital at home across the country is uneven, with few rural facilities participating, researchers wrote. The findings “underscore the need to address practical and implementation challenges to broaden equitable access,” they said.

• Per Healthcare Cost Institute news releases,
  • Health care spending can differ dramatically depending on where Americans live, with costs varying by more than twofold from one metro area to another, according to new findings from the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI). Charleston, WV, tops the list of the highest spending markets, with annual costs more than twice those in places like Bakersfield, CA, one of the country’s lowest spending areas.
  • The new data comes from the Health Cost Landscape, HCCI’s updated interactive platform that compares health care spending, prices, service use, and market dynamics across 269 metro areas in 45 states. The tool gives a clear, local look at how health care markets function and where consumers are paying the most for care.
• and
  • “The Transparency in Coverage (TiC) regulations have introduced unprecedented visibility into negotiated health care prices in the United States. By requiring insurers to publish machine-readable files containing payer–provider contracted rates starting in 2022, the policy has created a new data source for studying price variation. However, the scale, inconsistency, and missing information within the TiC data mean that rigorous methodological work is required before it can be used for research. This brief explores the nature of this data, how it is accessed and processed, and how it can be used for analysis, with a detailed walkthrough of a real example examining childbirth prices in Pennsylvania.” * * *
  • “Transparency in Coverage data represent a significant advancement in the availability of information on negotiated health care prices, offering researchers a new lens into variation across payers, providers, and markets. As demonstrated in the childbirth analysis in Pennsylvania, TiC data can be used to replicate and extend findings from traditional claims-based research, particularly in understanding the range and distribution of negotiated rates across payers and providers.
  • “At the same time, the value of TiC data depends heavily on the methods used to create an analytic dataset. The raw data are not inherently research-ready and require substantial processing, including careful service definition, data cleaning, provider and payer entity resolution, and restrictions to ensure comparability. Without these steps, analyses may not be replicable and risk reflecting the messiness of the raw data rather than meaningful differences in prices. Additionally, the absence of utilization data remains a fundamental limitation, requiring integration with external sources to fully assess spending and average prices.
  • “Overall, TiC data should be viewed as a powerful but incomplete resource. When used appropriately, they can provide important insights into health care pricing dynamics and market structure. As data quality improves and methods continue to evolve, TiC data are likely to become an increasingly valuable complement to claims data in health services research.”

• Per Fierce Healthcare,
  • “Hims & Hers launched an artificial intelligence agent embedded in its platform to help interpret biomarker lab results and provide users personalized insights about their health.
  • “The company launched its direct-to-consumer lab testing program for health biomarker testing back in November. The new agent AI, Labs AI, has been available to some customers in beta testing and will roll out to all Labs customers over time, the company announced Thursday.
  • “Hims & Hers’ Labs offers access to 130 biomarker tests across 10 health areas, including heart health, metabolism, hormones, inflammation and stress, as part of its strategy to extend into prevention and health screening. The new AI care agent makes customers’ lab results clearer, more useful and easier to engage with, according to Patrick Carroll, M.D., Hims & Hers chief medical officer.”
• and
  • “Ardent Health topped the market’s revenue and earnings estimates, touting Wednesday solid adjusted admission and labor spend numbers despite what has proved to be a tumultuous first quarter for hospitals. 
  • “The publicly traded for-profit logged $1.6 billion of total revenue, which was up 7% year over year and 1.3% above Zacks Investment Research’s consensus estimate. Net income was $40 million, or 28 cents per share, beating the consensus estimate of 18 cents per share. 
  • “Similar to other for-profit health systems’ reports from the past few weeks, executives acknowledged the impacts of a weak respiratory season and severe winter storms on Ardent’s business, particularly in Texas, Oklahoma and New Jersey. That led to a 1.1% year-over-year decline in admissions, though CEO Marty Bonick said during Wednesday’s earnings call that the company “acted swiftly to reschedule surgeries and adjust labor to align with volume, mitigating the impact on our performance.”

• Per Fierce Pharma,
  • “With an eye on the lucrative U.S. market, Italy’s Angelini Pharma will acquire rare disease specialist Catalyst Pharmaceuticals and its potential blockbuster, Firdapse, for $4.1 billion.
  • “Rome-based Angelini, a family-owned private company established in 1919, is paying $31.50 per share for Florida-based Catalyst. It is a 3% premium on Catalyst’s share price at close yesterday and a 21% premium on its price on April 22 before market activity hinted at public knowledge that a sale was in the offing. Bloomberg reported the potential buyout on April 27, triggering another stock surge.”

• Per MedTech Dive,
  • “Roche has agreed to acquire PathAI, a Boston-based digital pathology firm, for up to $1.05 billion.
  • “Roche plans to pay $750 million upfront and up to $300 million in additional milestone payments, according to a Thursday announcement. 
  • “The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions, including antitrust and regulatory approvals.”