Weekend Update

Medical / Rx research

Weekend Update

David Ermer–Congress, End of the PHE, NE, Medical / Rx research, OPM, U.S. Healthcare–
Photo by Michele Orallo on Unsplash

The Senate and the House of Representatives return to Washington, DC for Committee business and floor voting tomorrow.

On Thursday, April 20, OPM will hold the postponed second day of the OPM AHIP FEHB Carrier Conference. Of course, the FEHBlog will be in attendance.

Federal News Network tells us

  • “Just 19 of the 74 agencies in the 2022 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings either held steady or improved their employee engagement score.
  • “But among many declining trends in the Partnership for Public Service’s results, some agencies still managed to shine.
  • “When we look at these averages, I think it’s so much more powerful when we pull apart and look at the variation across government and within agencies,” said Max Stier, the Partnership’s president and CEO, at a Best Places to Work ceremony Wednesday.”

From the regulatory front, the Department of Health and Human Services announced its plan to continue PREP Act liability protections related to Covid testing, preventive services and treatments well beyond May 11.

From the U.S. healthcare business front

  • Beckers Payer Issues lists 100 things to know about the Blue Cross Blue Shield system.
  • The Wall Street Journal reports “Merck & Co. said it agreed to acquire Prometheus Biosciences Inc. for $10.8 billion, a push into the lucrative market for immune-disease treatments.”
  • Healthcare Dive discusses the financial condition of non-profit hospitals.

From the medical research front, The Wall Street Journal informs us

  • “Moderna Inc. and Merck & Co.’s cancer vaccine helped prevent relapse for melanoma patients, results from a midstage trial showed, demonstrating progress in the pursuit of shots to ward off cancer by jump-starting the immune system. 
  • “About 79% of high-risk melanoma patients who got the personalized vaccine and Merck’s immunotherapy Keytruda were alive and cancer-free at 18 months, compared with about 62% of patients who received immunotherapy alone, researchers said Sunday. The 157-person trial offers some of the strongest evidence yet that such vaccines could benefit cancer patients. 
  • “I am fairly encouraged that this will open up a whole new set of trials,” said Jeffrey Weber, the senior investigator on the trial and deputy director of the Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone Health.”

From the artificial intelligence front, NPR discusses efforts to use AI to improve a volunteer driven app for the visually impaired called Be My Eyes.

  • “Hans Jørgen Wiberg, a Danish furniture craftsman, created the app after he got tired of calling his friends and family to ask for help identifying things. (Wiberg is visually impaired.) He spent a couple years developing it, and the app launched in 2015. 
  • “But eight years later, there’s a twist. As artificial intelligence, or AI, becomes more accessible, app creators are experimenting with an AI version using tech as well as human volunteers. Be My Eyes CEO Mike Buckley says the argument for AI is that it can do things people cannot. 
  • “What if the AI ingested every service manual of every consumer product ever?,” says Buckley. “And so you could tap into the AI and say, ‘How do I hook up my Sony stereo?'” Furthermore, Buckley says, “we took a picture of our refrigerator and it not only told us what all the ingredients were but it told us what we could make for dinner.”

Nifty.

Fortune Well identifies “The five best supplements for healthy aging, according to a longevity expert.” The article notes “If you’ve ever walked down the supplement aisle in a pharmacy, you’ve seen the overwhelming abundance of options available for your medicine cabinet. According to the 2022 Council on Responsible Nutrition Consumer Survey on Dietary Supplements, 75% of Americans use dietary supplements, most on a regular basis.” By the way, the five best are

  • Calcium for bone strength
  • Vitamin D for immunity and bone strength
  • Probiotics for gut health
  • Magnesium for mood, and
  • Multivitamins to cover the bases.

Midweek update

David Ermer–Congress, HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules, Medical / Rx research, Mental health care, Rx coverage–
Thanks to Alexandr Hovhannisyan for sharing their work on Unsplash.

From our Nation’s capital —

  • STAT News reports
    • “Senators are slightly delaying their latest legislative push on health care, but as they do, a clearer picture is emerging about what’s in — and out — of the mix.
    • “The Senate health committee was expected to mark up legislation related to generic drugs, pharmacy benefit managers, and some leftovers from the Food and Drug Administration’s user fee agreements next week, but leaders are planning to reschedule the meeting, several sources told STAT.
    • “But 17 health care industry lobbyists and Senate staffers said Democratic leadership is targeting relatively low-hanging fruit that is bipartisan, and already has established history in legislation [i.e., a $35 copay on insulin in the commercial market]”.
  • Beckers Payer Issues tells us that “the Justice Department has decided to seek a stay pending appeal of a Texas federal judge’s ruling that struck down an ACA provision requiring insurance companies to provide coverage for preventive services, CNN reported April 11.”
  • The Department of Health and Human Services proposed a HIPAA privacy rule change “to strengthen its protections by prohibiting the use or disclosure of protected health information (PHI) to investigate, or prosecute patients, providers, and others involved in the provision of legal reproductive health care, including abortion care.” The public comment period will end sixty days after April 17, 2023, the day on which the proposed rule will be published in the Federal Register.

From the public health front —

  • MedPage Today informs us
    • Fentanyl adulterated with xylazine is an “emerging drug threat” in the U.S. and requires immediate action, the Biden administration warned.
    • “This is the first time in a nation’s history that a substance is being designated as an emerging threat by any administration,” said Rahul Gupta, MD, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), during a phone call with reporters late Tuesday afternoon. “And it couldn’t come at a more critical time.”
  • ABC News reports
    • The number of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the United States shows “no signs of slowing,” new federal data shows.
    • A total of 2.53 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis were recorded in 2021, according to a new report published Tuesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
    • That’s a 5.8% increase from the 2.39 million cases reported in 2020 and a 7% increase from five years ago when 2.37 million STIs were recorded in 2017.
    • “I’d like people to understand that this data actually impacts them whether they think it does or not and it’s because STIs happen to everyone, regardless of socioeconomic, religious, political lifestyle,” Dr. Kameelah Phillips, an OBGYN in New York City, told ABC News. “I’d like them to really understand that routine testing at their health care office is super important … gonorrhea doesn’t care who you are.”
    • While certain STIs did not reach pre-pandemic levels, others — such as syphilis — are recording the highest numbers seen in more than 70 years.

From the mental healthcare front —

  • Benefits Pro highlights a survey finding that
    • 21% of workers at ‘high mental health risk’ and unaware of available [employer sponsored] counseling.
    • Employees often do not know the range of resources available to them in their benefits packages and are often unaware of counseling included in the company’s employee assistance program, according to a TELUS survey.

Federal agencies and the Postal Service sponsor EAPs, but the FEHBlog is unaware of OPM creating a connection between those programs and the FEHBP.

From the Rx coverage front —

  • Drug Channels offers a report on specialty pharmacies which informs us that “Drug Channels Institute (DCI) estimates that in 2022, retail, mail, long-term care, and specialty pharmacies dispensed about $216 billion in specialty pharmaceuticals prescriptions. That’s an increase of 12% from the 2021 figure.”  
  • The Institute for Clinical and Economic Research released
    • a Protocol outlining how we will conduct our third annual assessment of how well major insurers’ prescription drug coverage policies align with a set of fair access standards developed by ICER with expert input from patient advocates, clinician specialty societies, payers, pharmacy benefit managers, and life science companies, and
    • a Draft Evidence Report assessing the comparative clinical effectiveness and value of exagamglogene autotemcel (“exa-cel”, Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics) and lovotibeglogene autotemcel (“lovo-cel”, bluebird bio) for sickle cell disease.  The draft report represents the midpoint in ICER’s eight month long review process.

From the medical research developments front

  • STAT News reports, “A Parkinson’s ‘game changer,’ backed by Michael J. Fox, could lead to new diagnostics and, someday, treatments.” It’s a heartening medical research story about Mr. Fox’s productive efforts.
  • Medscape reports
    • Phototherapy is a safe, effective, noninvasive, and inexpensive way of boosting cognition for patients with dementia, new research suggests. It may be “one of the most promising interventions for improving core symptoms” of the disease.
    • A new meta-analysis shows that patients with dementia who received phototherapy experienced significant cognitive improvement compared to those who received usual treatment. However, there were no differences between study groups in terms of improved depression, agitation, or sleep problems.