Home » Authors » Tom Murphy / Special to IBJ

Tom Murphy / Special to IBJ

Articles

Wishard owner fishes growing revenue stream: Health and Hospital Corp. buys 19th nursing home

The owner of Wishard Memorial Hospital added a 19th nursing home to its investment portfolio earlier this year, as it continues to pull revenue from a market filled with struggling competitors. Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County purchased American Village Retirement Community, a complex of garden homes, apartments and a nursing home near the intersection of East 54th Street and Keystone Avenue, for $2.6 million, said Matt Gutwein, Health and Hospital president and CEO. Gutwein said the deal, like…

Read More

Busy session for insurance forces: Compact passage highlights plethora of industry-related legislation considered by the General Assembly

State lawmakers also killed a bill that offers “mandate lite” health coverage and kept the topic of vicious dogs at bay during the 2005 legislative session. Insurance lobbyists and regulators say they just wrapped up one of the busiest sessions in recent memory. Topics ran a wide gamut and crowded committee calendars. Last year, five industry-supported bills made it through the General Assembly, according to Dan Tollefson, corporate counsel for the state Department of Insurance. This year, 15 did, and…

Read More

Competition stakes claim on hospital’s turf: Dialysis center would sit 1 block south of Methodist

A real estate company has filed plans to build a medical office building and dialysis center downtown, in the shadow of Methodist Hospital and Clarian Health Partners. A and T Realty wants to plop a 13,416-square-foot office on what now is a parking lot a block south of Methodist, according to plans filed with the city. The development has no connection to Clarian, according to Mike Quinn, a lawyer representing A and T. Clarian, whose three downtown hospitals all offer…

Read More

Vote sets up big switch for Standard: Company awaits insurance department’s approval of sale

With two key shareholder votes in his favor, Standard Management Corp. Chairman and CEO Ron Hunter made major strides last week in remaking the Indianapolis holding company. Common-stock shareholders overwhelmingly approved the sale of Standard Life Insurance Co. and Dixie National Life Insurance Co. to Louisville-based Capital Assurance Corp. May 18. Later that day, the company announced most of the holders of its trust-preferred securities agreed to a plan that preserves more than $20 million in cash for Standard in…

Read More

Elite execs raking it in: As pay swells, critics urge restraint

Special Report: Elite execs raking it in As pay swells, critics urge restraint Highest-paid Indiana public company executives in fiscal ’04. Includes salary, bonus and other annual compensation, as well as long-term pay and stock option grants. 1) includes $1.7 million signing bonus received upon becoming CEO and president in August 2004 Turns out life’s certainties stretch way beyond the cliché about death and taxes, especially in corporate Indiana. If you’re a top executive at one of Indiana’s biggest public…

Read More

Stock options lose favor, but still fuel big pay totals:

The numbers boggle the mind and dominate the pay totals. Last year, Eli Lilly and Co. boss Sidney Taurel received stock options that could balloon in value to $18 million over the next decade, even if the company’s shares underperform the stock market’s historical average return. The grant of options to buy 400,000 shares of stock accounted for nearly 80 percent of the $23 million in compensation doled out last year to Lilly’s chairman, CEO and president. Options made up…

Read More

Health builders thinking small: Local hospital development in for change

Just north of Indianapolis, Clarian Health Partners plans to open a 170-bed hospital this December, a suburban complement to the 76-bed hospital it opened last December in Avon. To the south, St. Francis Hospital and Health Centers unveiled a heart center in March, counterbalancing the two stand-alone heart hospitals that sprang up on the north side a few years ago. These projects offer a snapshot of how health care development has progressed over the past few years in central Indiana….

Read More

Union puts Harborside Healthcare on defensive: Publicity campaign highlights problems at local homes

Feces in the shower. Pressure sores. Dead worms in the corner of one building. “Be careful who you trust with nursing home care,” shout four billboards placed recently around Indianapolis by a union that wants to warn people about problems like chronic understaffing at Harborside Healthcare nursing homes. Nonsense, counter Boston-based Harborside managers. They claim the union is using isolated events to “extort” more pay and benefits from Harborside and expand union membership. Either way, Indianapolis appears to be the…

Read More

Top-producing broker returns with strings attached: Marc Jaffe has restrictions he must abide by in new job

A top, albeit troubled, Indianapolis stockbroker has re-entered the investing arena via a Florida-based employer and a new restricted license. However, Marc Jaffe’s fresh start includes a couple of clouds carried over from his past two jobs: lingering criminal charges for some alleged threats and a lengthy consumer complaint list. Jaffe, 49, started working last fall for Tampa Bay, Fla.-based GunnAllen Financial Inc. from a 96th Street office in Indianapolis a few months after he was fired by his previous…

Read More

Cook treading into new territory: Bloomington medical firm makes move toward untapped stent market

Cook Inc. plans to slide its coated-stent ambitions from the heart down to another region of the body where a multimillion-dollar market awaits. The Bloomington-based medical-device maker recently started testing a product that uses the same drug Cook put on a coronary stent it tried to develop a couple of years ago with Guidant Corp. Instead of treating arteries near the heart, the Zilver PTX stent targets blockages in the major artery that runs through the thigh. Cook is the…

Read More

Navigating a painful journey: St. Vincent Pediatric Hospice helps families cope

Erin Sammons knew nothing about St. Vincent Pediatric Hospice when she gave birth to her son, Hart, last November. She just knew that Hart had a chromosome disorder, and doctors expected his life to last only minutes or maybe days. The hospice offered help, so she took it. Hart lived for almost a month, and Sammons said the hospice staff walked her family through every step of that journey. “It was a tragedy, and my heart breaks every day ……

Read More

Wishard aims to even it up: Health system could break deficit string

About half the bills Wishard Health Services used to send out came back sans payment thanks to an error. Now that happens only 4 percent of the time, a change that saves millions, according to Wishard number-crunchers. Improvements such as these might spur a multimillion-dollar turnaround in Wishard’s ledger this year, said Matt Gutwein, the leader of Marion County’s safetynet hospital. Wishard will attempt to break even by the end of 2005, a far cry from the $77 million deficit…

Read More

New day care offers option for sick children: Sniffles ‘N Such opens near Methodist Hospital

The new Sniffles ‘N Such day care separates itself from the average Indianapolis nursery in subtle ways, but working parents say the relief it provides is anything but minor. Day Nursery Association opened the care center for sick children earlier this year near Methodist Hospital. The nursery provides an invaluable service for parents through a child-care niche that can be tough to maintain, according to those in the field. The center is for mildly ill children who may be too…

Read More

Million dollar baby: Hospital reaps benefits of caring for high-profile boy A public relations jackpot

The Afghan boy may have arrived last month at Riley Hospital for Children with heart trouble and a need for complicated surgery. But behind those soft, brown eyes and that adorable smile lies a 12-cylinder marketing engine. A sample of the 15-month-old’s power: Qudrat’s often-reported story created at least $1 million in free media for Riley, according to hospital officials. That’s 10 times the amount Riley spends on print or broadcast advertising in a year. He could be responsible for…

Read More

Conseco Insurance Group plans sales rebound: Insurer boosts product line, agent recruitment

Conseco Insurance Group just closed the book on a disappointing 2004 but its leaders already have a jump on several initiatives to prevent a repeat in 2005. The Conseco Inc. subsidiary launched two new life insurance products earlier this year and is aiming for a 25-percent increase in new business in 2005, according to Brad Corbin, the insurance group’s new executive vice president of sales. The insurer also has started burning some phone lines to boost the independent sales force…

Read More

Legislature revisits multistate insurance compact: Proposed bill awaiting House consideration could cut red tape and improve speed of products to market

The Indiana General Assembly is taking another stab at a bill that could make life easier for some insurance sectors by pushing products to market at a faster clip. A proposal that would allow Indiana to join a multistate compact for life insurance, disability, annuity and long-termcare products passed the Senate earlier this legislative session and awaits consideration in the House of Representatives. The bill died there last year. However, new state Insurance Commissioner Jim Atterholt thinks it has a…

Read More

Lilly faction seeks split of exec roles: Shareholder group wants to separate chair, CEO jobs

The shareholders think Lilly should separate its chairman and CEO roles. Sidney Taurel currently holds both jobs and the title of president. The group wants an independent chairman. It’s one of six shareholder proposals on the agenda for Lilly’s April 18 annual meeting at its headquarters. The move would address “a leadership crisis at our company” created by the lack of access to affordable medicines, according to the proposal listed in Lilly’s recently filed proxy statement. Lilly’s board disagrees and…

Read More

Ownership change draws near for Robin Run: NBA reorganization plan calls for sale to Brookdale

Robin Run Village, a northwest-side retirement complex, could start spring under new management if it and other National Benevolent Association properties are sold in the next few weeks as expected. Robin Run and 10 other NBA locations around the country are slated to become the property of Chicago-based Brookdale Living Communities. Brookdale’s parent, Fortress NBA Acquisition LLC, bid $210 million last year to buy the senior living locations from the bankrupt NBA for Brookdale, but the deal still has some…

Read More

Anthem, docs still skirmish: Insurer’s new pre-approval rules rankle some A rocky marriage

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield just dumped a load of extra work on the office staff of the average ear, nose and throat specialist, according Dr. Thomas Whiteman. The WellPoint Inc. subsidiary now requires pre-approval for nonemergency, high-tech imaging such as MRI or CAT scans. The insurer started the new policy March 1 to curb overuse. Whiteman said the average otolaryngologist-or ear, nose and throat specialist-schedules as many as eight of these tests a day. If Anthem insures just…

Read More

Auction company packing up Winona: Closed hospital has potential buyer, attorney tells court Getting organized

“That’s to keep the spirits away, make ’em happy,” Brian Hayes explained as he turned past the blaring radio. Auctioneers and the occasional unexplained phenomenon have taken over Winona, as the closed hospital nears an April auction date for its remaining equipment. Hayes, of San Francisco-based Rabin Worldwide Inc., has piled up seven-day workweeks since early February cataloging and organizing the defunct hospital’s assets. All that work may go for naught, however, if the auction proposal dies in bankruptcy court…

Read More