From Washington, DC,

• Today, the Government Accountability Office released a report on priority open recommendations made to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
  • “In May 2024, GAO identified 16 priority recommendations for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Since then, OPM has implemented three of those recommendations.
    • Specifically, OPM took actions to better mitigate cybersecurity risks, improve its payroll database, and strengthen privacy protections for personally identifiable information on its IT systems.
  • In August 2025, GAO identified one additional priority recommendation for OPM, bringing the total number to 14. These recommendations involve the following areas:
    • preventing improper payments,
    • strengthening IT security and management,
    • addressing mission critical skills gaps,
    • improving the federal classification system,
    • making hiring authorities more effective,
    • improving payroll data, and
    • addressing employee misconduct and improving performance management.
  • OPM’s continued attention to these issues could lead to significant improvements in government operations.

• Fierce Healthcare tells us,
  • “The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) this week released new data fueling a narrative of rampant broker fraud on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges.
  • “Plans received data finding 23% of enrollees did not have a claim in 2019. That number jumped sharply to 35% last year.
  • “Before the pandemic, the data were largely consistent across three categories: members on state-based exchanges, members on the federal exchange in Medicaid expansion states and on the federal exchange in non-expansion states. No matter the group, about 22% to 24% of enrollees did not have a claim.
  • “But, by 2024, expansion states on the federal exchange saw an increase from 22% to 32%, and the non-expansion population jumped from 24% to 41% without a claim, according to the agency’s data. Meanwhile, enrollees on state-based exchanges without claims climbed modestly from 22% to 24%.”
• The suspicion is that brokers have been adding phantom enrollees to highly federal government subsidized silver and bronze plans.
  • The Paragon Health Institute adds,
    • “As Paragon discussed in our The Great Obamacare Enrollment Fraud series, large-scale fraud schemes have led to people enrolling in exchange plans without their knowledge, and others being misled by false offers of cash or gift cards to apply for insurance. A few months ago, a Bloomberg exposé revealed fraud rings in Florida, including brokers earning thousands daily by enrolling people who often had no idea.”

• An HHS news release features a trip that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy took to Alaska last week to highlight rural and tribal health priorities.

• Beckers Health IT considers whether the Trump administration can achieve its goal of doing away with clipboards in healthcare. It’s worth pointing out
  • “Curtis Cole, MD, vice president and chief global information officer of Ithaca, N.Y.-based Cornell University, said he’s “hopeful that something positive” will come from the plan, but he’s not “particularly sanguine.”
  • “A lot of it looks like the all-too-frequent use of computers to make bad processes work faster, rather than fixing the fundamental problem,” he said.
  • “He pointed to the lack of a national patient identifier, which other developed nations have. The Trump administration is advocating for digital identity verification to link patients to their records, but Dr. Cole says those systems often have incorrect or incomplete information.”
• HIPAA, a 1996 federal law, calls for HHS to create a national patient identifier but Congress has blocked funding for that initiative. 

• STAT News reports,
  • “A handful of drug companies have formed a group to present lawmakers with research on what the industry sees as the negative impacts of Medicare drug price negotiations, according to lobbying records.
  • “The group is called the IRA Watchdog after the Inflation Reduction Act, which directed Medicare to negotiate the prices for some drugs. Its members are Merck, AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb Company, and Eli Lilly, according to lobbying disclosure records. The group describes itself as a “coalition analyzing the impact of Medicare Drug Price Negotiation on patients.” * * *
  • “The IRA Watchdog is not a stand-alone lobbying organization. It’s housed in the firm DLA Piper, and its two lobbyists were staffers for former Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who while in Congress championed the biotech sector, a key driver of the economy in his home state. Burr is a senior policy adviser at DLA Piper and the chair of its health policy strategic consulting practice.”

From the Food and Drug Administration front,

• BioPharma Dive reports,
  • “Insmed has gained approval for its second lung disease medicine, announcing Tuesday Food and Drug Administration clearance of Brinsupri to treat a chronic condition that results in dilated airways in the lungs, chronic cough and frequent respiratory infections.
  • “Brinsupri is the first drug to treat bronchiectasis not caused by cystic fibrosis and the first in a new class of drugs called DPP-1 inhibitors that could treat multiple inflammatory conditions. Startup Expedition Therapeutics just signed a deal with Fosun Pharma for most rights to a DPP-1 inhibitor, while Boehringer Ingelheim and Haisco Pharmaceutical Group have drugs in development.
  • “Wall Street analysts forecast as much as $6 billion in annual sales for Brinsupri. Insmed’s market valuation has swelled to more than $25 billion in anticipation of coming sales from Brinsupri, its other approved drug Arikayce and pipeline candidates in lung disease and Duchenne muscular dystrophy.”

From the public health and medical research front,

• MedPage Today tells us,
  • “Fewer Americans are reporting that they drink alcohol amid a growing belief that even moderate alcohol consumption is a health risk, according to a Gallup pollopens in a new tab or window released Wednesday.
  • “A record high percentage of U.S. adults, 53%, now say moderate drinking is bad for their health, up from 28% in 2015. The uptick in doubt about alcohol’s benefits is largely driven by young adults — the age group most likely to believe drinking “one or two drinks a day” can cause health hazards — but older adults are also now increasingly likely to think moderate drinking carries risks.
  • “As concerns about health impacts rise, fewer Americans are reporting that they drink. The survey found that 54% of U.S. adults said they drink alcoholic beverages such as liquor, wine, or beer. That’s lower than at any other point in the past three decades.
  • “The findings of the poll, which was conducted in July, indicate that after years of many believing that moderate drinking was harmless — or even beneficial — worries about alcohol consumption are taking hold. According to Gallup’s data, even those who consume alcohol are drinking less.”

• Health Day informs us,
  • “Nearly 70 percent of U.S. children in car crashes with a fatality are not using proper child passenger restraints, according to a study published online July 31 in Traffic Injury Prevention.
  • “Arthi S. Kozhumam, from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and colleagues identified child, driver, vehicle, neighborhood, and policy-level factors associated with suboptimal child passenger safety practices in motor vehicle collisions (MVCs) with a fatality. The analysis included data from child passengers (younger than 13 years old) in cars and light trucks with known restraint status and seating location identified from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System database (2011 to 2021).”

• Per a National Institutes of Health news release,
  • “A National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported clinical trial has found that the outcome of treating complicated Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infections with two intravenous (IV) doses of the antibiotic dalbavancin seven days apart is just as good as daily IV doses of conventional antibiotics over four to six weeks. Nearly 120,000 S. aureus bloodstream infections and 20,000 associated deaths occurred in the United States in 2017. The study results provide the clearest evidence to date for the safety and effectiveness of dalbavancin therapy for complicated S. aureus bloodstream infections, expanding the number of antimicrobial treatment options for clinicians and patients. The findings were published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
  • “Given the small number of antimicrobial drugs available to treat Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infections and the bacteria’s growing drug resistance, establishing dalbavancin as a beneficial therapy for these severe infections gives us a vital new alternative to treat them,” said John Beigel, M.D., the acting director of the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which sponsored and funded the trial.”

• Medscape offers “Perspectives on Managing Antibiotic Resistance.”

• Per MedPage Today,
  • “Men had higher mortality and hospitalization rates than women after a dementia diagnosis.
  • “These relationships held even after controlling for age and comorbidity burden.
  • “The study was based on over 5.7 million Medicare patients with up to 8 years of follow-up.”
• and
  • “Applying five published definitions for long COVID yielded a prevalence that ranged from 30.84% to 42.01% at 3 months and 14.23% to 21.94% at 6 months.
  • “Up to a third of the variation in prevalence rates could be attributed to the differences in long COVID definitions.
  • “While ideal, there may never be a single, standardized long COVID definition, given the divergent needs of researchers and clinicians.”
• and
  • “Clear” e-cigarettes had disproportionately greater cardiovascular effects than other types of vapes when smoking conditions were controlled.
  • “Clear” e-cigarettes contained synthetic coolants, menthol, and other flavorings despite their marketing.
  • “Acute increases in blood pressure may be related to the synthetic coolants reducing tobacco or nicotine harshness and facilitating deeper inhalation.”

• The National Institute of Standards and Technology explains why “Wearable, Implantable and Ingestible Medical Devices Could Revolutionize Your Health Care.”
  
• Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology reports,
  • “Targeted DNA editing by CRISPR technology has great potential for applications in biotechnology and gene therapy. However, precise gene editing remains a challenge largely due to insufficient control of the DNA repair process. While mechanisms exist to accurately repair double-stranded breaks, DNA end joining repair can occasionally lead to genetic errors.  
  • “In a new study published in Nature Biotechnology titled, “Precise, predictable genome integrations by deep learning–assisted design of microhomology-based templates,” researchers at the University of Zurich (UZH) have found that repair at the genome-cargo interface is predictable by artificial intelligence (AI) models and adheres to sequence-context-specific rules. The AI tool, named “Pythia,” predicts how cells repair their DNA after it is cut by CRISPR/Cas9 and opens the door to more accurate modeling of human diseases and next-generation gene therapies. 
  • “Just as meteorologists use AI to predict the weather, we are using it to forecast how cells will respond to genetic interventions. That kind of predictive power is essential if we want gene editing to be safe, reliable, and clinically useful,” said Soeren Lienkamp, PhD, professor at the Institute of Anatomy of UZH and co-corresponding author of the study.” 

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

• Fierce Healthcare relates,
  • “Providence posted a $21 million operating loss (-0.3% operating margin) for the second quarter of the year as elevated volumes and revenues outpaced year-over-year expense increases.
  • “The operating performance is an improvement over the prior year’s $123 million operating loss (-1.6% operating margin), for which the 51-hospital nonprofit credited its “continued focus on staffing and reductions from expense management initiatives.” The system is sitting at a $265 million operating loss (-1.7% operating margin) across six months.
  • “Providence executives cheered the system’s steady march toward breakeven after several consecutive years of losses.
  • “Still, the organization stressed a slew of economic headwinds it refers to as a “polycrisis” affecting nonprofit health systems like Providence as cause for continued expense reduction. Among these are inflation, tariffs, new state regulations around staffing and charity care, payment delays from commercial payers and the impending federal funding cuts of the “one big, beautiful bill.” 
• and
  • “Health tech and artificial intelligence companies see ripe opportunities to offer solutions that help patients access and share their medical data with digital health apps. And it comes at a time when the federal government is pushing for consumer-directed data exchange.
  • “HealthEx, a company that built data rights management solutions, launched a platform to provide real-time patient access to complete health records. The company worked with a team of industry partners to develop a process that verifies patient identity, captures consent and retrieves clinical records, enabling the data to flow without the patient doing multiple patient portal logins.
  • “The company aims to create an “Apple Wallet” for health records, executives said.
  • “CLEAR, an identity verification tech company often found at airports, worked with HealthEx on the initiative, along with national electronic health record company athenahealth, healthcare interoperability company MedAllies and the CommonWell Health Alliance.”

• Beckers Hospital Review points out,
  • “Three-quarters of the hospitals on U.S. News & World Report’s 2025-26 Honor Roll list also earned top marks in CMS’ latest Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings, underscoring a notable overlap in national measures of hospital excellence. 
  • “CMS released its 2025 star ratings Aug. 6, evaluating more than 4,600 hospitals nationwide on 46 quality measures spanning mortality, safety, patient experience, readmissions, and timely and effective care. This year, 290 hospitals earned a five-star rating. U.S. News published its 2025-26 Honor Roll on July 29, recognizing 20 hospitals for top performance across 15 specialties and 22 procedures and conditions.
  • “While the two lists use different methodologies and scoring systems, their alignment highlights organizations that excel across quality- and reputation-based benchmarks.”

• Beckers Payer Issues notes,
  • “Optum has acquired Kingsport, Tenn.-based Holston Medical Group, WJHL reported Aug. 11. 
  • “The 200-provider medical group has more than 70 locations in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, according to the report. 
  • “Holston Medical Group is pleased to join Optum to support our efforts to continue to provide exceptional health care services to patients in the communities we serve,” an Optum spokesperson said in a statement shared with the news outlet. “Holston Medical Group and Optum share common goals around providing patients with high-quality, local care with a focus on value and innovation. We look forward to the breadth of clinical expertise and capabilities that we will gain as part of Optum.”

• Per BioPharma Dive,
  • “PureTech Health, a biotechnology firm with a web of startup subsidiaries, announced Tuesday the launch of a new company that will develop a respiratory disease treatment it’s been advancing through clinical testing.
  • “Called Celea Therapeutics, the company debuts with a drug candidate nearing late-stage trials that the company believes could treat multiple inflammatory lung diseases. Known as deupirfenidone or LYT-100, the drug is initially being evaluated against idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a rare and chronic condition. 
  • “Sven Dethlefs, who has spearheaded the deupirfenidone program under PureTech over the last year, will lead Celea. Prior to joining PureTech, Dethlefs was the CEO of Teva North America, where he oversaw the company’s specialty and generic businesses in the U.S. and Canada.”

• Per MedTech Dive,
  • “Heartflow’s initial public offering grossed $364.2 million after the volume and price of the shares sold exceeded the original expectations.
  • “The company listed last week and completed the sale of the overallotment on Monday, adding almost $50 million through the sale of additional shares.
  • “Heartflow’s stock rose in its first two days on public markets, closing at almost $30 on Monday. The company priced its IPO at $19 a share.
  • “Heartflow has developed software for making 3D heart models from coronary computed tomography angiography scans. In a clinical trial, the company linked its lead product, Heartflow FFRCT Analysis, to a 78% improvement in identifying patients in need of revascularization.”