From Washington, DC

• The U.S. Office of Personnel Management promulgated a final rule
  • to amend its career and career-conditional employment regulations. The revision is necessary to implement section 1108 of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2019, which requires OPM to issue regulations implementing hiring authorities that allow agencies to hire certain post-secondary students into positions at specified grades in the competitive service. The intended effect of the authority is to provide additional flexibility in hiring eligible and qualified individuals.

• Federal News Network adds,
  • “Some senior political appointees, including the vice president, will continue to see a long-standing freeze on their salaries. The Office of Personnel Management announced that pay rates will continue to be capped for certain Executive Schedule employees. Political appointees in Schedules C and G, however, are exempted from the pay freeze. Certain higher-paid positions have continued to see their salary capped for more than a decade. For 2026, the pay ceiling sits at about $197,000.(Updated guidance — pay freeze for certain senior political officials – Office of Personnel Management)
• and
  • “The Office of Personnel Management will make job offers to the first participants in the TechForce initiative as soon as March 1. OPM Director Scott Kupor said the agency is in the final stages of reviewing the applications for software engineers and data scientists to join the government for two to four years and work on specific modernization projects. Kupor said OPM will soon open up applications for cybersecurity and web design positions. OPM plans to hire 1,000 technologists to work with agencies and private sector companies to solve specific agency technology challenges.(First set of TechForce hires to come in early March – OPM)”

• Tammy Flanagan writing in Govexec tells us, “Federal workers delay retirement as savings gaps persist.A survey shows most workers expect to retire at 65 or later, but many haven’t calculated savings for health care or emergencies.”

• JAMA informs us,
  • “Every year over the last 2 decades, the share of Medicare beneficiaries enrolling in Medicare Advantage has increased.¹ The number of plans available to Medicare Advantage beneficiaries has also increased year after year, doubling in number over the last 7 years.² As a result, Medicare Advantage beneficiaries have rarely had to contend with disruptions resulting from Medicare Advantage plans exiting the market (forced disenrollment), which may include adjustment to different provider networks, plan benefit packages, and supplementary benefits. However, recent reports suggest that many insurers will stop offering plans in 2026.^3,4 This study characterized the scale and impact of Medicare Advantage plan exits for beneficiaries.”

• STAT News reports,
  • “After years of grand ambitions, the federal government disclosed that it is months away from rolling out a centralized list of doctors and hospitals filled with up-to-date contact and insurance information.
  • “Details of how the national provider directory will work are scant — federal officials buried the development in a document intended for health insurance companies. The directory will be in a testing phase to start. * * *
  • “The agency plans to conduct an initial beta launch of the National Provider Directory later this year, with iterative improvements and expansions to follow,” federal officials said in the guidance document for Medicare Advantage plans.”

From the Food and Drug Administrationm

• BioPharma Dive reports,
  • “Going forward, the Food and Drug Administration will generally only require one pivotal trial to support the approval of new medicines, top agency officials announced Wednesday.
  • “Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and top deputy Vinay Prasad said they are ending the “two-trial dogma,” a standard set in the 1960s to ensure the safety and efficacy of medical products. Technological advancements mean the FDA and sponsors can now focus on designing one high-quality trial that can better assess results, they said.
  • “In practice, many drugs in recent years have sped to market with only one pivotal study, thanks to changes Congress made in 1997. But Makary and Prasad argued that a new official standard is needed. “Default options anchor individuals and institutions psychologically, and we believe that formally articulating the FDA’s new position will spur biomedical innovation,” they wrote.”

• CNBC adds,
  • “Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary told CNBC that he believes “everything should be over the counter” unless a drug is unsafe, addictive or requires monitoring – doubling down on a push that some in the pharmaceutical industry have questioned. 
  • “In an interview Wednesday in Washington, D.C., Makary said the FDA aims to make changes this year that allow more companies to offer their prescription medicines over the counter, or OTC. He noted that the agency is going through “the proper regulatory processes” to update OTC monographs –  the rulebooks that determine which drugs can be sold without a prescription. 
  • “Makary said the FDA is looking at “basic, safe” prescription drugs like nausea medications and vaginal estrogen, which is used to treat menopausal symptoms like dryness and pain. 
  • “In my opinion, everything should be over the counter and not requiring a prescription, unless it’s unsafe, unless you need laboratory tests to monitor how it’s being received by your body, or if it could be used for some nefarious purpose or it’s addictive,” Makary told CNBC after the PhRMA Forum, a one-day event organized by the pharmaceutical industry’s largest lobbying group.” 

• Per MedTech Dive,
  • “Medtronic has received Food and Drug Administration clearance for a next-generation spine surgery system that combines artificial intelligence-based planning, real-time navigation and robotic assistance.
  • “The Stealth AXiS system has a modular design that can be used in both hospital settings and ambulatory surgery centers and can accommodate a range of surgeon preferences, Medtronic said Friday.
  • “The underlying architecture can also support cranial applications and ear, nose and throat surgeries, pending 510(k) clearance, according to the device maker.”
• and
  • “The Food and Drug Administration posted an early alert Tuesday for a problem with certain Trividia Health blood glucose monitors linked to 114 injuries and one death.
  • “Earlier this month, Trividia issued a correction for four versions of its True Metrix blood glucose system. The company updated the devices’ instructions for use to clarify that patients should seek medical attention if they have symptoms of high glucose and receive an error code.
  • “The affected products may issue an error code in the case of a very high blood glucose result (higher than 600 mg/dL) or in the event of a test strip error, according to the FDA alert.”

From the public health and medical / Rx research front,

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced,
  • “Data from the National Vital Statistics System
    • “After increasing from 2016 (77.1%) to 2021 (78.3%), prenatal care beginning in the first trimester decreased to 75.5% in 2024.
    • “From 2021 to 2024, care beginning in the second trimester increased from 15.4% to 17.3%, and late or no care increased from 6.3% to 7.3%.
    • “From 2021 to 2024, prenatal care beginning in the first trimester decreased, while care beginning in the second trimester and late or no care increased, for all maternal age groups.
    • “First trimester prenatal care decreased, while second trimester prenatal care and late or no care increased, for nearly all race and Hispanic-origin groups from 2021 to 2024.
    • “From 2021 to 2024, late or no care increased in 36 states and the District of Columbia.”

• Cardiovascular Business adds,
  • Hypertensive disorders during pregnancy are being recognized more and more as early warning signs of what is yet to come.
  • “We’ve increasingly come to appreciate that pregnancy can really be seen as a red flag or a risk signal of long-term maternal cardiovascular risk when certain complications emerge,” said Michael Honigberg, MD, MPP, a preventive cardiologist and researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital.
  • These complications include preeclampsia and gestational hypertension. He said clinicians have known for more than 25 years that these hypertensive pregnancy disorders are associated with higher, long-term cardiovascular risks. However, widespread integration of this knowledge into daily practice has lagged behind. In fact, only recently have these ideas been embraced by the broader cardiovascular community.
  • “I think the lack of that next step in terms of what do as a cardiologist with that information has sort of hindered people,” Honigberg explained.
  • He emphasized that asking a woman about about pregnancy history takes one second and can yield critical insight into a patient’s future risk.
• and
  • “After years of implanting left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) devices in atrial fibrillation (AFib) patients, an interventional cardiologist with the University of Chicago Medical Center (UChicago Medicine) has developed a new device that could be a more affordable alternative to Boston Scientific’s Watchman and Abbott’s Amplatzer Amulet LAA Occluder. 
  • “Atman P. Shah, MD, a professor of medicine and co-director of the cardiac cath lab at UChicago, found that the currently available devices for LAAO were still associated with significant limitations. Their round shape is a poor fit for many patients, for example, and they require active fixation. With these issues in mind, Shah developed a minimally-invasive device that seals the LAA using a gel that adapts to the AFib patient’s anatomy and then hardens. A catheter delivers the gel, and an umbrella-like piece at the end of that catheter protects the heart during treatment. 
  • “Shah believes this device will reduce the risk of stroke in these patients while also limiting the likelihood of adverse complications while it is being implanted by an interventional cardiologist.” 

• The Washington Post reports,
  • “Scientists showed in a new study published Thursday that they could use blood draws to build a “clock” for Alzheimer’s disease that could roughly predict when symptoms will develop, findings that could eventually transform how the illness is diagnosed and treated.
  • “A simple blood test can help diagnose Alzheimer’s, but the study in the journal Nature Medicine shows how these kinds of tests could one day play a greater role in preventing the insidious, memory-robbing illness.In the new study, researchers built a model that could use blood test results to forecast symptom onset within a margin of three to four years.
  • “The technique is not yet precise enough to predict the course of a patient’s trajectory. But it could be used to identify which patients would benefit if companies are able to develop drugs to treat the disease before symptoms develop.
  • “In the short term, the approach could accelerate the research to identify such treatments by recruiting the ideal study participants: people withno symptoms, but who are at high risk for developing them soon.” * * *
  • “Suzanne E. Schindler, a dementia specialist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who helped lead the study, said she’s been involved with research studies that are attempting to test treatments before people have cognitive impairment. When those people receive a positive test, she said, they immediately ask: “So how long do I have before I develop symptoms?”

• Medscape relates,
  • “Current research supports the idea that remission of type 2 diabetes is increasingly achievable.
  • “A 2023 study published in Diabetes Care showed that an intensive low-energy total diet replacement program in Australian primary care led to diabetes remission at 1 year in about half of the participants with recently diagnosed type 2 diabetes, with higher remission rates tracking with greater weight loss. Meanwhile, a September 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis in the same journal pooled 18 nonsurgical randomized controlled trials and found that structured interventions, particularly those producing substantial weight loss, consistently achieved clinically meaningful remission rates.
  • “Evidence from other journals points in the same direction.”
• and
  • “The therapeutic variations among patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) present ongoing treatment challenges. However, the two currently approved biologics, dupilumab and mepolizumab, have shown success for a subset of patients with type 2 inflammation, and more biologics are in the pipeline for COPD, said Don D. Sin, MD, a pulmonologist at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, in a presentation at the 2025 GOLD International COPD Conference.
  • “Both dupilumab and mepolizumab were originally approved for asthma but were subsequently studied in patients with COPD who continue to experience symptoms and moderate-to-severe exacerbations despite other treatments and who demonstrate type 2 inflammation based on high blood eosinophil counts, Sin said. The biologics target inflammatory pathways to get to the root of the problem, he added.”

• Per Health Day,
  • “Cumulative lead exposure is suggested as a potential dementia risk factor, according to a study published online Feb. 12 in Alzheimer’s & Dementia.
  • “Xin Wang, Ph.D., M.P.H., from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and colleagues examined prospective associations between lead exposure and incident Alzheimer disease (AD) and all-cause dementia. Blood lead was measured at baseline and patella and tibia lead were estimated for 6,217 and 5,865 participants, respectively, from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)-III (1988 to 1994) and 8,038 and 4,824 participants, respectively, from continuous NHANES (1999 to 2016), and was then linked to Medicare and the National Death Index for incident AD and all-cause dementia.
  • “In continuous NHANES, the researchers found that when comparing quartile 4 with quartile 1, estimated patella lead was associated with AD and all-cause dementia (hazard ratios, 2.96 and 2.15, respectively). Weaker associations were observed in NHANES-III. No association was seen for blood lead.”
• and
  • “Pain during pregnancy and after delivery can significantly increase a woman’s risk of postpartum depression, a new evidence review has concluded.
  • “Further, there are specific pain-related risk factors that influence the odds of postpartum depression among women in racial and ethnic minorities, researchers reported in the journal Current Psychiatry Reports.
  • “There are multiple interrelated factors that contribute to pain, particularly childbirth-related pain,” researcher Sudhamshi Beeram, a graduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Campaign, said in a news release.”

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

• Beckers Payer Issues reports,
  • “There’s “a hunger for a different kind of dialogue” when it comes to relations between payers and providers, according to Aetna President Steve Nelson.
  • “Mr. Nelson laid out a vision for Aetna that centers on rebuilding trust in the industry, an effort he said is already producing measurable results with some of the country’s largest health systems and that informed Aetna’s recognition as Press Ganey’s inaugural health plan of the year earlier this month.
  • “I can tell you firsthand that the provider community and provider organizations wake up every day trying to do good work. And so do payers,” Mr. Nelson told Becker’s. “I think if we can start with positive intent and change the dialogue — if we can focus on the patient and the member as opposed to our own issues — we end up in a better place.”
  • Mr. Nelson, who took the helm at Aetna in late 2024 after leading UnitedHealthcare and value-based primary care company ChenMed, said the insurer’s strategy rests on three themes: better navigation to help members move through a complex system, an advocacy mindset that treats member interactions as more than transactions, and stronger partnerships with providers.
  • “That last theme, he said, is one the industry needs to focus on getting right. The payer-provider dynamic “has not always been super constructive,” Mr. Nelson said, “and that needs to change. This idea that we can’t work together is not true.”

• Fierce Healthcare relates,
  • “Despite a string of recent selloffs, executives told analysts Thursday that hospital deals are still likely on the table for Community Health Systems in 2026. 
  • “The Franklin, Tennessee-based for-profit, currently owns or leases 65 affiliated hospitals. It’s cut down its portfolio by about 35% since 2019, with a string of divestitures announced or executed in the past handful of months alone. 
  • “The dealmaking has helped the company turn its first cashflow-positive year in some time, and is fueling both increased investment into CHS’ remaining core hospitals as well as efforts to deleverage. 
  • ‘As of the end-of-year earnings call, Kevin Hammons, CHS director and CEO, told curious analysts that the company is “getting closer to the end of our programmatic divestitures,” but that it was still in the “early stages of discussions” for “a couple transactions” that aren’t guaranteed reach the finish line. CHS is still getting inbound interest on some of its other hospitals in strong markets, he said, but the company is less eager to let those facilities go.”
• and
  • “In a fourth-quarter conference call, Insmed CEO Will Lewis admitted that it was “audacious” that his company would project sales of newly approved respiratory drug Brinsupri to reach $1 billion in 2026. Then he laid out the case of why the forecast isn’t so cheeky at all. 
  • “We have a number of different data sources we examine,” Lewis said on Thursday morning. “Across all the metrics, we’re seeing [numbers] at or above our targets and that’s very much behind why we have a conviction that we’ll do at least $1 billion in revenue in Brinsupri this year.”
  • “Approved in August with much fanfare as a first-in-class dipeptidyl peptidase 1 (DPP1) inhibitor, Brinsupri was pegged by analysts at Mizuho Securities for a peak sales potential of $6.6 billion, but even they were surprised by its dynamic launch. Last month at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, Insmed revealed sales of $145 million in the fourth quarter, promptingMizuho to call it “a ginormous result.” 
  • “On Thursday, Lewis added that the launch “surpassed even our most ambitious expectations,” which were based on “a basket of historically strong respiratory launches as our guide.”

• Healthcare Dive tells us,
  • “Telehealth use in primary care has held fairly stable in recent years, suggesting the sector has reached an equilibrium after a boom in virtual care amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an analysis by Epic Research. 
  • “Telehealth visits accounted for over 8% of primary care encounters in July 2022, according to the research published on Tuesday. By October 2025, telehealth made up just under 6% of visits — a roughly 30% decline. 
  • “But since 2023, the share of virtual care visits in primary care has held relatively steady at around 6% to 7% of appointments.”

• Per Beckers Hospital Review,
  • “With cancer care growing beyond hospital walls and more cancer patients surviving than ever before, health systems in the U.S. are doubling down on their oncology infrastructure commitments.
  • “Cancer care can no longer be designed around treatment alone. We must intentionally redesignoncology as a continuum of care, where survivorship is not an afterthought but a core clinical strategy,” Robert Stone, CEO at Duarte, Calif.-based City of Hope, told Becker’s.
  • “As breakthroughs in precision diagnostics and cellular therapies accelerate at a rapid pace, leaders are tasked with balancing lifesaving but expensive cancer care investments with other system priorities.
  • “Hospital and health system leaders often underestimate the complexity of patient selection, treatment timing and site-of-care decisions,” Armin Ghobadi, MD, bone marrow transplant specialist and medical oncologist at St. Louis-based Siteman Cancer Center, told Becker’s. “Ultimately, successful immunotherapy programs depend on tight alignment between clinical expertise, operational authority and sustainable financial models — recognizing immunotherapy as an enduring service line rather than a one-time therapeutic event.”
• and
  • “Select Medical, which operates more than 100 critical illness recovery hospitals in the U.S., plans to close its hospital in Meridian, Miss., by March 13. 
  • “In an online statement, Regency Hospital-Meridian said it is no longer accepting new admissions and will close on or before March 13.
  • “Regency Hospital-Meridian is a 40-bed facility on the second floor of Baptist Anderson Regional Medical Center-South, according to a Feb. 19 report from The Meridian Star. A Select Medical spokesperson told the Star the planned closure is an operational business decision and patients can receive care at Ochsner Specialty Hospital, also in Meridian.”