Around Indiana, hospitals are doubling down on the lofty goal of patient satisfaction. Some, like IU Health, are hiring managers to oversee various aspects of the patient experience, from registration to discharge.
Advances in non-invasive surgeries, changes in health care financing and now increasingly price-sensitive patients accelerate what has been a 40-year decline in the number of patients spending the night in hospitals.
Community Health Network and Johnson Memorial Hospital plan to spend $14 million to build a medical office building and outpatient center in Bargersville. The 70,000-square-foot facility is scheduled to be completed in mid-2013.
Dr. Eric L. DeWeese, a pulmonologist, joined Danville-based Hendricks Regional Health Medical Group on Jan. 1. DeWeese treats patients with diseases of the chest and lungs, emphysema, asthma, pneumonia, lung cancer, respiratory failure and sleep disorders. He did his medical training at the Indiana University School of Medicine.
Five cancer physicians from Indianapolis-based Community Health Network began seeing patients Jan. 2 at the Cancer Care Center of Franklin-based Johnson Memorial Hospital. The arrangement is part of the clinical collaboration the two hospital systems signed in March 2011. The new physicians are Dr. Anuj Agarwala, Dr. Pablo Bedano, Dr. Sumeet Bhatia, Dr. Hermachandra Venkatesh and Dr. Radhika Walling. They join Dr. Anita Conte, who previously staffed the Cancer Care Center.
RepuCare OnSite LLC hired J. Spencer Milus as executive vice president. Milus most recently ran her own consulting firm focused on employer health and wellness strategies. She previously worked for Indianapolis-based benefits consultancy First Person Benefit Advisors, Community Health Network’s Infinity Employer Health Solutions and health insurer WellPoint Inc. RepuCare and its parent company, RepuCare Inc., provide medical staffing and on-site health care services.
Dr. Charles E. Kinsella has joined St. Francis Medical Group and established a practice with the newly formed Pulmonary & Sleep Specialists in Greenwood. Kinsella most recently was associated with Southside Pulmonary and Sleep Consultants in Greenwood.
Johnson Memorial Hospital named Steve Jarosinski chief officer of physician practices, managing the hospital’s employed physicians. He previously served as the hospital’s vice president of clinical operations.
Johnson Memorial named Richard Kester its new director of specialty ancillary services. He previously served as vice president of clinical services at Rush Memorial Hospital in Rushville.
Eli Lilly and Co. lost the first round of its family legal dispute with Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc. The California-based company won an injunction that prevents Indianapolis-based Lilly from using the same sales force to sell the Amylin-created drug Byetta as well as a new drug called Tradjenta, made by Germany-based Boerhinger Ingelheim GmbH. Both drugs are for patients with Type 2 diabetes, and therefore would compete against each other. Byetta is an injectable medicine and Tradjenta is an oral agent. Lilly said it is disappointed with the first ruling and will keep fighting Amylin’s lawsuit.
Franklin-based Johnson Memorial Hospital and Indianapolis-based Community Health Network will put their clinical collaboration agreement into effect June 1. The agreement was reached in February, after Johnson Memorial also considered proposals from Franciscan St. Francis and Indiana University Health. The deal, while not an acquisition, solidifies Community’s presence in the fast-growing southern suburbs of Indianapolis, where it already maintains a 150-bed hospital along County Line Road. Johnson Memorial, located nearly 15 miles south, is licensed for 101 beds. Hospitals and doctors are being pushed by health insurance plans to partner up to keep patients healthy—both before and after they actually seek medical care. But Community and Johnson Memorial are also looking to expand their offerings, particularly for heart patients.
Advion BioServices, a subsidiary of New York-based Advion BioSciences Inc., has opened its 22,000-square-foot drug-discovery and bioanalytical laboratory at the Purdue Research Park of Indianapolis' technology center at the Ameriplex Business Park near the Indianapolis International Airport. The new facility, staffed with 50 employees, was announced in March. Advion, a contract-research organization, will focus on earlier-stage, drug-discovery and metabolism bioanalytical services that evaluate how a potential new medicine is absorbed and metabolized in experimental models. Many of these services generate the data needed to prepare a molecule for human trials.
Indianapolis-based BioStorage Technologies announced Thursday it has opened a 60,000-square-foot biorepository facility in Indianapolis. The $4.6 million facility, located near the Indianapolis International Airport, will be used to prepare, store and transport tissue and blood samples. BioStorage serves biotech companies, such as Massachusetts-based Biogen Idec, as well as medical-device makers such as Minnesota-based Medtronic Inc. and academic research institutions. The facility will allow BioStorage to prepare samples for its clients via automated equipment, which the company says provides the accuracy needed by high-volume medical researchers. BioStorage, founded in 2002, is one of a handful of central Indiana companies that have developed a specialty in life sciences logistics. Others include Indianapolis-based Sentry BioPharma Services Inc., Plainfield-based MD Logistics Inc., and Bloomington-based BioConvergence LLC.
Community Health Network won a three-way race for a close partnership with Johnson Memorial Hospital, besting Franciscan St. Francis and Indiana University Health.
West Lafayette-based Kylin Therapeutics Inc. received a nearly $250,000 grant from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service that will advance the company's nanoparticle cancer-treatment research. Kylin's technology uses RNA and a natural process called RNA interference to directly target and "turn off" disease-causing genes. Kylin’s technology was discovered at Purdue University by former Purdue professor Peixuan Guo.
Lilly Ventures, the venture-capital arm of Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co., led a $24 million investment round in Massachusetts-based Cerulean Pharmaceuticals, which is developing nanoparticle drugs. According to Xeconomy.com, the Series C funding round will help Cerulean pay for Phase 2 clinical trials of its leading nanoparticle drug, which is designed to treat lung cancer. Steve Hall, a venture partner at Lilly, has joined Cerulean’s board of directors in connection with the funding round. Cerulean has now raised $56 million in venture capital.
Johnson Memorial Hospital asked county officials to approve a $14 million expansion of its surgical center to accommodate larger surgery suites, as well as new recovery beds and physician offices, according to the Daily Journal of Franklin. That expansion would add 29,000 square feet and renovate 9,300 square feet of existing space. Johnson Memorial wants to start construction in the spring and complete the project by late summer of 2012.
Employees of public school corporations south of Indianapolis, along with Franklin College and Johnson County government, will be able to get free access to an immediate-care clinic under a new agreement with Johnson Memorial Hospital in Franklin. Called the Express Care Clinic, the service will be provided by the staff at the JMH Immediate Care Center in Franklin. The schools and county government health plans will pay a fee to Johnson Memorial to provide non-emergency care to all participants in their health plans, as well as their dependents. Such direct-contracting arrangements are becoming increasingly common, especially for public-sector employers. The South Central Indiana School Trust set up a similar arrangement last year with Morgan Hospital and Medical Center.
Indianapolis-based Arcadia Resources Inc. narrowed its quarterly loss to $2.9 million, or 2 cents per share, compared with a year-ago loss of $4.1 million, or 3 cents per share. Revenue in the three months ended Sept. 30 rose nearly 3 percent to $25.8 million on 44-percent growth in the company’s DailyMed drug management service. The DailyMed services packages the numerous prescriptions taken by some patients into ready-to-take packets marked with the time of day they’re supposed to be taken. Arcadia’s pharmacists also call patients to help them comply with their prescription regimens. The company signed a 3-year contract extention with Indianapolis-based health insurer WellPoint Inc. to provide the DailyMed service to the Medicaid recipients WellPoint manages in some states. Also, Arcadia signed a new deal with New York-based health plan Touchstone Health, to start providing the DailyMed service to its members on Jan. 1.
Third-quarter profits rose slightly at WellPoint Inc. but soared above Wall Street expectations. The Indianapolis-based health insurer raised its full-year profit forecast by 20 cents per share, excluding investment gains, to $6.45 per share. WellPoint earned $739 million during the three months ended Sept. 30, a 1-percent gain over the same quarter a year ago. The profits were driven by lower-than-expected claims expenses and lower administrative costs. Profits per share totaled $1.84. But excluding investment gains of 10 cents, the company would have earned $1.74 per share, a slight decrease from the $1.78 per share it earned a year ago. Analysts were expecting profit of $1.57 per share, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters. Quarterly revenue of $14.6 billion also edged analysts’ expectations, even though it fell 5 percent from the same quarter last year.
A swing in investment results boosted CNO Financial Group Inc.'s third-quarter profits, even as accounting charges depressed the performance of its underlying insurance businesses. The Carmel-based life and health insurer's investment losses and special charges from a year ago turned into slight investment gains this year, allowing it to boost third-quarter profit by 221 percent to $49.4 million. Profit per share was 17 cents, compared with 8 cents in the same quarter a year ago. Excluding charges, the company recorded operating income of 16 cents per share. On that basis, Wall Street analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters were expecting 15 cents per share. Revenue for the three months ended Sept. 30 fell 6 percent to $1.05 billion.
Indianapolis-area hospitals spent billions on construction in the past decade and increasingly tried to poach patients from one another’s territories. Yet last year—one of the worst economically in recent history—21 of 26 hospitals still were able to show operating profits.
