The company's top-selling product, the insulin Humalog, saw U.S. sales by volume rise 10 percent in the third quarter. But because of rebates and other discounts, revenue dropped 14 percent.
Indianapolis-based Strand Diagnostics LLC will receive up to $30 million in investment capital over the next three years from Los Angeles-based NantWorks LLC, a seed-stage investment firm, the companies announced last week. Strand Diagnostics makes the Know Error system, which uses bar coding and DNA matching to make sure biopsy samples are matched to the correct patients when submitted to its labs for testing. The investment capital will help it scale up its operations and sales efforts, the company said in a news release. NantWorks is the same company that announced in January it would sink $85.5 million into a former Pfizer Inc. plant in Terre Haute to produce injectable drugs for use in cancer patients and in critical care situations. NantWorks predicted the plant would employ 234 people by 2016. Strand Diagnostics, which operates a testing lab south of Indianapolis International Airport, launched Know Error in 2009. The company has 58 employees, with 48 of them in Indiana.
The Federal Trade Commission gave the OK to the marriage of Express Scripts Inc. and Medco Health Solutions Inc., two pharmacy benefit managers that combined employ 800 people in the Indianapolis area. The $29 billion deal, according to Bloomberg News, would create the nation’s biggest manager of prescription-drug benefits for corporate and government clients. But it is unclear how the merger will affect staffing at St. Louis-based Express Scripts' facility near Indianapolis International Airport and Medco’s distribution center near Whitestown. A combined Express-Medco would handle 34 percent of prescriptions in the U.S. this year, according to Adam Fein, president of Pembroke Consulting Inc. in Philadelphia, who is a consultant for Express Scripts. However, that share will shrink to 29 percent next year because Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group Inc. switched from Medco to its own pharmacy benefits unit, OptumRx.
Federal authorities charged a Carmel man on Friday with using his Indianapolis business to defraud the Indiana Medicaid program of more than $1 million. Donald Hamilton, 49, allegedly used his company, Hamilton Medical Inc., to generate false invoices showing that compression stockings for another of his companies, Indianapolis-based Compression Etc., cost almost three times what he paid for them. Hamilton sent invoices to the Indiana Medicaid program for reimbursement for an amount much higher than allowed by law, according to charges announced by Joseph Hogsett, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Indiana. He said the investigation was a collaborative effort among the Department of Health and Human Services, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigations unit and the Indiana Attorney General’s Medicaid fraud control unit.
Roche Diagnostics Corp. plans to eliminate about 80 information technology jobs at its Indianapolis-area campus over the next two years. The first round of reductions is to be completed by June 30. The IT workers are actually part of Roche Group’s global pharmaceutical informatics unit, but live in the Indianapolis area, said Roche spokeswoman Julie Bower. Roche employs about 3,000 people at its Indianapolis and Fishers facilities. The company’s worldwide headquarters are in Basel, Switzerland.
Warsaw-based orthopedic implant maker Biomet Inc. agreed to pay $22.7 million to settle allegations that it bribed government-employed doctors in Argentina, Brazil and China for more than eight years to win business with hospitals. The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission announced the settlements March 26. Biomet will pay a $17.3 million criminal penalty but won't be prosecuted by the Justice Department if it institutes strict internal controls to prevent bribery and hires an expert to monitor its compliance for 18 months. Biomet, which operates in about 90 countries, also agreed to pay $5.4 million in restitution to resolve the SEC's civil charges. Biomet is the third medical device company—in addition to New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson and U.K.-based Smith & Nephew plc—to pay a criminal penalty and sign a deferred-prosecution agreement in the government's investigation into bribery by medical device makers of doctors employed by governments overseas.
Express Scripts Inc.’s $29.1 billion bid for rival drug benefit manager Medco Health Solutions Inc. won unconditional approval from U.S. antitrust regulators, clearing the way to create the biggest manager of prescription-drug benefits for corporate and government clients.
Express Scripts Inc.’s bid to acquire Medco Health Solutions Inc. and create the largest U.S. pharmacy-benefits manager may be delayed by a lawsuit being considered by five states.
Two pharmacy groups opposing Express Scripts Inc.’s proposed acquisition of Medco Health Solutions Inc. said they were asked by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to suggest ways to revise the $29.1 billion deal so it wouldn’t harm competition.
Drugstore operator Walgreen Co. said Thursday it expects to lose almost 90 percent of prescriptions handled by pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts Inc. after it leaves Express Scripts' networks on Jan. 1.
Pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts Inc. said Tuesday it is in the middle of a contract dispute with WellPoint Inc., one of the biggest health insurers in the United States.
New York-based Pfizer Inc., the world’s biggest drugmaker, said it isn’t interested in breaking up its animal health unit after Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. expressed interest in buying some of its products. Lilly’s Elanco Animal Health unit, which had $1.4 billion in sales last year, has been eager for acquisitions lately, buying up New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson’s European animal health assets early this year. Lilly Chief Financial Officer Derica Rice said Lilly would certainly take a look at Pfizer’s animal health assets, if Pfizer puts them up for sale. “We will watch how that situation evolves, and if there are some assets that become available that we are interested in, yes, we will pursue them,” Rice told investors and analysts on a conference call July 21. But later that same day, Pfizer spokeswoman Joan Campion told Bloomberg News that Pfizer would rather sell or spin off its animal health business as a whole, not in pieces. Pfizer’s animal health unit had sales last year of $3.5 billion.
It’s not yet clear how Express Scripts Inc.’s $29.1 billion deal to acquire rival Medco Health Solutions will affect the companies’ central Indiana operations—or their 800-plus employees at two facilities here. New Jersey-based Medco has 430 workers at a $140 million automated pharmacy and distribution center in Whitestown. It planned to ramp up Boone County employment to 1,300, but has fallen short of that goal after losing some large contracts. St. Louis-based Express Scripts, which acquired WellPoint Inc.’s pharmacy benefits subsidiary in 2009, said last year it had 400 employees at a specialty drug distribution facility near Indianapolis International Airport and planned to add 180 positions there by 2012. Medco announced last week that it lost an $11 billion contract with Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group Inc., accounting for 17 percent of its business. The loss drops Medco to No. 3 in the industry, trailing Express Scripts and CVS CareMark Corp.
Eli Lilly and Co. posted better-than-expected second-quarter results and raised its 2011 profit forecast. The Indianapolis-based drugmaker earned $1.2 billion, or $1.07 per share, in the three months ended June 30, a decline of 11 percent compared with the same quarter a year ago. The declines were driven mainly by a 16-percent rise in sales and marketing expenses—used to help launch a new diabetes drug Tradjenta, which Lilly is co-marketing with Germany-based Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH. Lilly also suffered increasing costs from the 2010 U.S. health care reform law, which mandated rebates and fees that cost the company $110 million in the quarter. Excluding a $132 million restructuring charge for Lilly’s ongoing layoffs of 5,500 workers, the company would have earned $1.3 billion, or $1.18 per share, which represents a 4-percent decline in profit from the same quarter last year, when all special charges are excluded. On that basis, analysts were expecting profit of $1.17 per share, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters. Revenue for the quarter totaled $6.3 billion, up 9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts expected only $6 billion in revenue.
It’s not yet clear how Express Scripts Inc.’s $29.1 billion acquisition of rival Medco Health Solutions will affect the companies’ central Indiana operations—or their 800-plus employees at two facilities here.
Express Scripts Inc. agreed to buy Medco Health Solutions Inc. for $29.1 billion to become the largest pharmacy-benefits manager in the United States. Both have central Indiana operations.
One-time events influenced bottom lines of some of the few companies that made more money in 2009.
Drug prices rose faster last year than they have in a decade—just in time for big rebates the drug industry promised
as part of the health reform law.
Drug distribution firm that acquired former WellPoint subsidiary plans to consolidate specialty pharmacy work at local
airport facility.
Express Scripts Inc. on the west side of Indianapolis and Zipp Speed Weaponry in Speedway are scheduled Wednesday afternoon
to announce the
creation of hundreds of new jobs.
