Company news

Carmel-based Mainstreet Property Group will open 24 more health care facilities for Hoosier seniors during this year and the next two years. Those facilities, in total, would create 3,000 permanent jobs for Hoosiers–if they’re allowed to be built. The Indiana General Assembly is mulling a five-year moratorium on the construction of skilled nursing facilities, which if passed would prevent Mainstreet from building any new facilities not already begun by June 30. That legislation, known as Senate Bill 173, has passed the Indiana Senate and now awaits a hearing in the Indiana House. Zeke Turner, CEO of Mainstreet, said that if Indiana enacts a construction moratorium, Mainstreet will simply build more facilities in other states. The company has existing facilities in eight states and is working to expand in six more. Mainstreet alarmed older nursing home companies by developing 10 new facilities in the past five years—and breaking an unwritten rule of the industry by building in competitors’ back yards. That prompted the Indiana Health Care Association and other long-term-care groups to call for a ban on new construction.

Purdue Research Foundation and Bloomington-based medical-device maker Cook Medical have created a $12 million fund intended to help life-science businesses with connections to Purdue University. The Foundry Investment Fund will try to work with other investors to provide funding for companies that use Purdue-licensed technology or Purdue’s expertise in human and animal health and plant sciences. It typically would provide a match to outside investors’ funds. Outside investors could include venture capital firms, corporations, angel funding groups, or qualified individuals.

Indiana University Health announced a deal with UnitedHealthcare on Feb. 6, ending a contract dispute that had pushed IU Health doctors and hospitals out of the health insurance company’s discounted network Jan. 1. The two-year agreement gives UnitedHealthcare discounted rates retroactive to Jan. 1. Such discounts, which insurers negotiate with hospital systems, reduce prices 30 percent or more. The dispute between Indianapolis-based IU Health and Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare dates to 2012, when the sides could not agree on a new long-term contract. They instead extended their previous agreement by one year, to Dec. 31, 2013, but then could not come to terms before the end of the year.