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Regenstrief Institute Inc. plans to build a $13 million, 80,000-square-foot headquarters at 10th and Wilson streets, the Indiana University School of Medicine announced on Aug. 14. The facility will be built on the medical school's campus at IUPUI on land leased from Indiana University. Regenstrief, a not-for-profit medical research organization, plans to move 50 investigators, 165 staff members and a number of affiliated scientists into the building when it is completed in mid-2015. Most of those employees now work in nearby locations at 1050 Wishard Blvd. and 410 W. 10th St. The Regenstrief Foundation has committed $5 million to the new building and the IU School of Medicine is contributing another $1 million, officials said. Schmidt Associates of Indianapolis is handling architecture and interior design. Regenstrief investigators developed and operate the Regenstrief Medical Record System, which has served as the electronic medical record system for Wishard, and now Eskenazi Health, since 1973. It is the oldest continually operational medical record system in the United States, Regenstrief said.

Eli Lilly and Co. says it will close its Elanco Animal Health enzyme plant in Terre Haute by early 2016 as part of a consolidation, according to the Associated Press. Lilly spokesman Ed Sagebiel told the Tribune-Star that the Indianapolis-based company is consolidating all of its animal enzyme manufacturing to a site in Great Britain. He said the plant closure will affect 23 employees, all of whom will be offered comparable positions at a Lilly plant near Clinton that employs about 500 workers. Clinton is about 15 miles north of Terre Haute. The Terre Haute plant makes animal feed enzymes that help animals digest food more efficiently, boosting farm productivity. Lilly purchased the Terre Haute plant in 2012.

Carmel entrepreneur Zeke Turner has agreed to sell the real estate investment trust he started two years ago for $950 million to focus on his original nursing home development company, Mainstreet Property Group. HealthLease Properties REIT, which Turner leads as CEO, announced Aug. 13 that it will be sold to Ohio-based Health Care REIT Inc. The Toledo, Ohio-based company, also known as HCN, also agreed to form a development partnership with Mainstreet under which it will acquire 17 projects Mainstreet has under construction and 45 senior care campuses it plans to build. In all, the deal is worth more than $2.3 billion. HCN, the largest U.S. health care landlord by market value, said it will pay $14.20 per share in Canadian dollars for HealthLease, 31 percent more than HealthLease's stock price before the deal was announced. HealthLease Properties, which is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, owns 51 senior care facilities in Canada and the United States, including 12 in Indiana. In second-quarter results announced Aug. 12, the company’s revenue and profit doubled from the previous year, to $17.6 million and $5 million, respectively, in Canadian dollars. Mainstreet has been the fastest-growing company in the Indianapolis area over the past three years. Revenue skyrocketed to more than $66 million last year.

A federal judge said Indiana can challenge an Internal Revenue Service rule that offers tax credits to Hoosiers who purchase health insurance on Obamacare’s federal marketplace, HealthCare.gov. According to Bloomberg News, U.S. District Judge William T. Lawrence in Indianapolis denied an IRS bid to dismiss that portion of the state’s 2013 lawsuit, in which it claimed the rule illegally conflicts with a provision of the federal law limiting those tax credits to enrollees in state-created exchanges. Lawrence’s ruling comes three weeks after U.S. appeals courts in Washington, D.C., and in Richmond, Virginia, reached conflicting conclusions about availability of the subsidy for which 4.5 million people have qualified. Indiana was one of the states that opted to not create an exchange. Lawrence, in his ruling, rejected U.S. contentions that Indiana and the 39 state public school systems that joined it in the suit would suffer no harm from the rule. Lawrence did, however, reject Indiana’s contention the mandate violated its sovereignty, ruling it, and 25 other states, lost that argument in the early stages of a 2010 Obamacare challenge that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the legislation as a valid exercise of Congress’ taxing authority.

Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. will change its name back to Anthem Inc., the brand under which it sells most of its coverage, according to Bloomberg News. The name change will be completed by the end of the year, pending shareholder approval, the company said in a statement. WellPoint will hold a shareholder vote on the change in November. WellPoint and other large health insurers find themselves increasingly marketing directly to consumers, as Obamacare requires most uninsured Americans to obtain coverage and employers thrust more responsibility for costs on their workers. The company sells plans in 14 of the health care law’s new insurance exchanges, in most cases under its Anthem brand.  The company doesn't sell plans under the WellPoint name. WellPoint Inc. was formed in 2004 when Indianapolis-based insurer Anthem Inc. completed a $16.5 billion merger with California-based WellPoint Health Networks Inc. Anthem Inc. was originally formed in 1995 when Indianapolis-based insurer Associated Group merged with Cincinnati-based Community Mutual Insurance Co. Anthem demutualized and conducted an initial public offering in 2001.

Bloomington’s Monroe Hospital LLC, which has had a close relationship with Indianapolis-based St. Vincent Health, filed for bankruptcy reorganization on Aug. 15 and plans to sell its business to a Canadian hospital operator. The Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition, filed in federal court in Indianapolis, said the 32-bed hospital had more than twice as many liabilities as assets. It has been losing money due to low patient traffic in the face of cross-town competition from Indiana University Health’s Bloomington Hospital. Monroe and St. Vincent signed a management agreement two years ago, with St. Vincent taking responsibility for Monroe’s quality and safety efforts, finance functions, physician relations and patient satisfaction. St. Vincent also considered adding Monroe to its 22-hospital network. Those merger talks and St. Vincent’s management of those Monroe services ended last October, but longtime St. Vincent executive Joe Roche was installed as Monroe’s CEO. St. Vincent is now one of Monroe’s largest creditors, with the hospital owing St. Vincent’s physician group $170,000. St. Vincent physicians provide cardiac care and orthopedic surgeries to Monroe patients. Even after the hospital is sold to a new owner, St. Vincent will try to continue its clinical relationship with Monroe.

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Company news

Assembly Pharmaceuticals Inc., which had offices in Indiana, has merged with New York-based Ventrus Biosciences, a publicly traded drug development firm, to create Assembly Biosciences. The new company trades on the NASDAQ stock market under the ticker symbol ASMB. Assembly has been developing antiviral drugs focused on hepatitis B based on the scientific research of Adam Zlotnick, a professor of molecular and cellular biochemistry at the Indiana University Bloomington campus. Zlotnick co-founded Assembly in 2012 with IU chemist Richard DiMarchi; IU biochemist William Turner; Dr. Uri Lopatin, an infection disease researcher based in San Francisco; and Indianapolis entrepreneur Derek Small. Small will be chief operating officer of Assembly Biosciences.

Eli Lilly and Co. signed a $45 million drug-development deal with United Kingdom-based biotech company Immunocore Ltd., according to the Wall Street Journal. Immunocore is trying to develop injectable cancer treatments that would direct the immune system’s T cells to get inside cancer cells and kill them. Immunocore will receive $15 million from Lilly upfront for each of three drug programs that have not yet entered human testing. If Lilly decides to take the treatments into the next stage of development, Immunocore can either receive a fee of $10 million to co-invest and develop the drugs or let Lilly develop the drugs while still retaining a right to future royalties if the drugs hit the market. Last year, Immunocore signed partnership deals with four other drug companies: Roche, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and Adaptimmune. Immunocore and Adaptimmune were previously one company called Avidex, formed based on patents licensed from the University of Oxford.

Indiana will be one of up to 20 new states in which Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group will compete on the Obamacare exchanges later this year. The health insurance giant sold on just four Obamacare exchanges for 2014, but will greatly expand its activity selling policies for 2015, according to the Associated Press. In Indiana, UnitedHealth has told the Indiana Department of Insurance it expects to sign up about 5,000 customers via plans sold under the All Savers brand. UnitedHealth representatives have told Indiana health insurance brokers that the company will make plans available for 2015, even though the specific states in which UnitedHealth will sell on the Obamacare exchanges has not been publicly released by the company. The exchanges, which are online marketplaces for health insurance, are the only place consumers can access Obamacare’s generous tax credits to reduce the cost of health coverage. UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley told Wall Street analysts on July 17 that the exchanges will become a more established part of future health care benefits, and UnitedHealth doesn’t want to enter those markets too late.

This isn’t what St. Vincent Health wanted. The Indianapolis-based hospital system’s clerical error of May 5, which sent 63,325 letters about patients' upcoming appointments to the wrong people, is now being cited by the information technology world as an example of the surge in data breaches. Trade publication PC World referred to the data breach at the St. Vincent Breast Health Center in an article headlined, “The 5 biggest data breaches of 2014 (so far)” (although the St. Vincent breach, in sheer number of people affected, wasn’t actually one of the five largest breaches). Also, SC Magazine, a trade publication for IT security professionals,  flagged the St. Vincent breach and even posted the letter the hospital system sent to its patients. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, there have been 21 percent more data breaches publicly reported in the United States so far this year, compared with the same period in 2013.

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The real health care money in this town is at IU Health

While the biggest hospital profit margins are made in the suburbs, the biggest pile of cash—$353 million in 2012—is made at the three downtown campuses run by Indiana University Health. In fact, those hospitals generated 32 percent of all operating gains posted by central Indiana hospitals in 2012.

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People

Dr. Jamie Cooper, an obstetrician and gynecologist, has joined St. Vincent Medical Group in McCordsville. She previously ran a private practice in Greenwood. Cooper earned her medical degree from New York College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Dr. Lawrence Cohen, a family physician, has joined Franciscan Physician Network Irvington Family Medicine. Cohen joins Dr. Mark Hodgkin and Dr. Bernard Herbst at their practice on East Washington Street. Cohen earned a bachelor’s degree from Wabash College and medical degree at Indiana University School of Medicine.

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Company news

Bring in the relationship experts to label this one. St. Vincent Health and Monroe Hospital in Bloomington have pulled back from their “strategic alignment”—which had St. Vincent managing Monroe’s operations but was a step short of a merger—and will instead settle for a clinical partnership for cardiology, orthopedic and critical care services. Longtime St. Vincent executive Joe Roche, who had led the attempt to integrate the systems, will now become the CEO of Monroe Hospital, starting Monday. “We are appreciative for the opportunity to have explored integration options with Monroe Hospital, and to continue our clinical partnerships to serve the residents of Bloomington and surrounding communities,” Ian Worden, interim CEO of St. Vincent Health, said in a prepared statement. The Bloomington market is dominated by St. Vincent’s archrival, Indianapolis-based Indiana University Health, which owns IU Health Bloomington Hospital there. Monroe, which boasts 32 inpatient beds, was having financial difficulties and had been looking at a partnership with Franciscan St. Francis Health before it struck its deal with St. Vincent last year.

Less-than-expected profit in emerging markets and a decline in the Japanese yen could make it difficult for Eli Lilly and Co. to meet a goal of at least $20 billion in revenue next year, the Indianapolis-based drugmaker said Thursday. But the company said it would cut costs, if necessary, to reach its other 2014 goals of $3 billion in profit and $4 billion in operating cash flow. “I am confident in our outlook to return to a period of growth and expanding margins,” Chief Financial Officer Derica Rice said in a statement. Lilly will also take a hit from Obamacare. The 2010 law, known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, required drugmakers to give larger rebates to federally funded health plans and will add a tax onto all U.S. sales of prescription drugs. Those impacts, as well as Obamacare's elimination of a tax benefit for retiree drug coverage, will cost Lilly about $500 million this year. But Lilly might also see its sales hampered by the Obamacare exchanges, the online marketplaces that started Tuesday in all 50 states. That's because health insurers, in an attempt to keep premiums low, are creating narrower formularies that exclude some drugs from coverage. Similarly, insurers are creating "narrow networks" that offer coverage for fewer doctors and hospitals.

Indiana University Health plans to eliminate 935 workers in Indianapolis, Carmel, Fishers and Muncie, according to documents filed by the hospital system with the state. The cuts will affect 746 in Indianapolis at Methodist Hospital, Riley Hospital for Children, University Hospital and IU Health Physicians. In Carmel, 67 will be cut at IU Health North Hospital. Two will be trimmed at Saxony Hospital in Fishers. In Muncie, IU Health plans 120 cuts at Ball Memorial Hospital. IU Health employs about 36,000 statewide. It says it's looking to save $1 billion in costs over the next four years. The Indianapolis-based system said last month it must make the cuts because fewer patients have been coming to hospitals, and payment rates for its services have been declining.

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Company news

By year end, the St. Vincent Health hospital system will spin off its New Hope organization for Hoosiers with development disabilities. St. Vincent New Hope will become a stand-alone organization that will continue to run group homes for its patients. New Hope started offering counseling, day programs and residential housing in 1978. About a decade later, St. Vincent joined forces with New Hope. St. Vincent Health will make a cash infusion to New Hope and also donate to New Hope more than 38 central Indiana group home properties. Jim Van Dyke, executive director of St.Vincent New Hope, said in a prepared statement, “This new phase in our history will allow us to implement even stronger programs that will enable New Hope to continue serving our clients well into the future.”

Major health insurers, including WellPoint Inc., are in line for another year of growth, thanks to Obamacare, according to Bloomberg News. Bloomberg cited Barclays Capital analyst Joshua Raskin, who in a research note late last week said the Medicaid expansion funded by Obamacare should help drive enrollment growth next year, and the health insurance exchanges in each state will wind up being a "very small" influence. WellPoint shares rose 57 cents Monday morning to $89.66 each.

Admissions at Indiana University Health hospitals in the first half of the year dipped 4.3 percent, prompting IU Health executives to give pink slips to about 800 employees, according to an announcement Thursday morning. Meanwhile, however, IU Health's business is stronger than ever, with income from operations shooting up nearly 20 percent in the first half of the year.IU Health currently has 36,000 employees, although many of them work part time. Its full-time-equivalent work force totals 27,000. For all of 2012, IU Health had revenue of $5.6 billion. IU Health’s decision comes less than three months after Indianapolis-based St. Vincent Health laid off 865 workers in late June, which was part of a 5,000-worker layoff by its parent organization, St. Louis-based Ascension Health Alliance. IU Health CEO Dan Evans said in an April interview that the hospital system is trying to cut $1 billion in expenses by 2017. So far, IU Health has been able to offset its decline in hospital admissions with an 8-percent price increase and by receiving more patient visits to its outpatient facilities. Excluding one-time items, IU Health income from operations rose 19 percent in the first half of 2013 compared to the same period in 2012. IU Health pulled in $186.3 million during those six months, compared with $156.6 million the year before. Inpatient admissions—those involving an overnight stay—had been climbing consistently throughout 2012. But then, in January, they started to fall.

Indiana University is cutting about 50 hourly workers at its Bloomington campus and shifting that work to a temporary staffing agency. Spokesman Mark Land said the move was in the works, but was accelerated so IU could avoid having to add those workers to the IU health insurance plan as required by the federal health care overhaul if they average more than 30 hours a week. Land told The Herald-Times that shifting 50 of the physical plant department's 650 jobs will also relieve the administrative task of managing the hours of seasonal workers. IU will have the Manpower agency hire the maintenance and custodial personnel after Sept. 28. The university will pay the agency an administrative fee to manage the workers.

Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. sued Canada last week, seeking $500 million in damages because the drugmaker thinks Canada’s courts violated the North American Free Trade Agreement by invalidating patents on two Lilly drugs. According to CBC News, Lilly had sought relief from Canada through arbitration, but will now take its complaint before a three-member tribunal. Lilly is suing because Canadian courts struck down some of its patents on its former bestseller Zyprexa, an antipsychotic medication, and on Strattera, a medicine to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Lilly says the court rulings, issues from 2009 to 2011, cost Lilly hundreds of millions in sales because they allowed cheaper generic versions of the drugs to undercut Lilly’s brand-name products sooner than would have otherwise occurred. "Patent decisions in Canada over the last decade not only fly in the face of long-established international standards, but they're subjective and completely unpredictable," Doug Norman, general patent counsel for Eli Lilly, said in a prepared statement.

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