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Five Indiana doctors made the list of drug-company favorites in a recent report by New York-based ProPublica. Carmel psychiatrist Chris Bojrab pulled in nearly $160,000, with the lion’s share coming from Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. and its antidepressant Cymbalta. Lafayette allergist Ketan Sheth was a close second, earning $159,225 from United Kingdom-based GlaxoSmithKline plc. Other doctors on ProPublica’s list: Indianapolis hematologist Maureen A. Cooper, who made $140,000, mostly from Cephalon; Terre Haute endocrinologist Isaiah Pittman, $126,000 mostly from Lilly; and Zionsville family physician Daniel Lynn Shull took home $102,000, nearly all of it from Lilly. After Lilly started disclosing its payments to doctors last year, Bojrab defended the pay for speaking on behalf of drug companies as well-earned. “We’re certainly well-compensated for what we do,” he said, adding that the pay is about 20-percent higher than what he would earn seeing patients. But it also requires a fair bit of work, especially arranging travel details. “It’s not uncommon for me to come home and spend three or four hours a night, just to work out the travel details,” he said. “And it’s not like the work that you had to do goes away.”

St. Francis Hospital & Health Centers has acquired the Immediate Care Centers' four Indianapolis-area locations: 1001 N. Madison Ave., 650 N. Girls School Road, 860 E. 86th St. and 992 N. Mitthoeffer Road. The centers were launched in 1981 by Bloomington-based Unity Physician Group. About 100,000 patients visit the centers each year. St. Francis, whose parent organization is based in Mishawaka, is the fourth-largest hospital system in the Indianapolis area.

A new professional service center on the northwest side of Indianapolis will employ 500 people to support the 70 hospitals operated by St. Louis-based Ascension Health. The Catholic not-for-profit organization is the parent of Indianapolis-based hospital system St. Vincent Health, which operates 19 hospitals around Indiana, including its flaghship campus on West 86th Street. St. Vincent employs more than 13,000 Hoosiers. The $10.9 million center is expected to open next summer and ramp up to peak employment by 2013. To lure the investment, the Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered Ascension up to $5 million in performance-based tax credits and up to $90,000 in training grants based on the company's job-creation plans. Develop Indy and the city of Indianapolis offered Ascension Health infrastructure support and a training grant worth up to $300,000. Develop Indy also will support a property-tax-abatement request before the Metropolitan Development Commission.

Orthopedic implant maker Zimmer Holdings Inc. saw its third-quarter profit climb 27 percent on lower operating expenses. The results beat Wall Street estimates, but Zimmer cut its estimate for revenue growth. The Warsaw-based company reported net income of $191.1 million, or 96 cents per share, up from $149.9 million, or 70 cents per share, a year ago. Sales fell 1 percent to $965 million. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected, on average, earnings of 95 cents per share on $994.7 million in revenue. Zimmer narrowed its full-year profit forecast to a range of $4.24 to $4.29 per share. The company had previously set full-year expectations for profit between $4.15 and $4.35 per share. It also trimmed its estimate of revenue growth on a constant currency basis for the year to 2 percent versus an earlier projection of 3-percent to 5-percent growth.

Indianapolis-based Dow AgroSciences improved revenue during the third quarter, thanks to a 26-percent increase in volume, but it still recorded a loss for the period. The unit of Michigan-based Dow Chemical Co. on Thursday reported revenue of $948 million, up 19 percent from the same period last year, despite lower prices. Quarterly earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, however, were a loss of $12 million—compared with a profit of $5 million a year ago. Dow Agro’s selling, general and administrative expenses increased 9 percent during the quarter because of new product launches and commercial activities related to recent seed acquisitions, the company said. Its research and development costs were up 14 percent.