Surprise closure to cost 100 manufacturing jobs
Winona PVD Coatings, which announced an expansion in 2016, has notified state officials it expects to permanently close both of its Warsaw sites.
Warsaw
Articles
Carmel spine surgeon wins $112M verdict in royalty battle with Medtronic
At issue in the five-year legal dispute was whether Dr. Rick Sasso was properly compensated for various inventions, and whether Minnesota-based Medtronic paid him sufficient royalties as spelled out in their agreements.
Lake City coming downtown; other banks also add branches
Lake City, part of Warsaw-based Lakeland Financial Corp., will open an office this fall at 101 W. Ohio St.
Former IU star abandons basketball career to take over e-sports organization
Jared Jeffries is leaving his NBA front office job to team up with former Lakers star Rick Fox in the latter’s sports group for professional video gaming.
Marsh Supermarkets closing nine more stores this month
The latest announced closings, seven of which are in the Indianapolis area, bring the total number of Marsh grocery stores that are set to shut their doors this month to 19.
DVORAK: Make repeal of medical device tax permanent
With the temporary tax suspension, device companies are once again reinvesting in development of the next generation of life-changing medical devices.
Obamacare’s medical device tax is (probably) killing jobs—but not a lot so far
A Census Bureau survey suggests that medical device firms created 20,000 fewer jobs from 2011 to 2013 than they should have—and some of those missing jobs probably can be blamed on Obamacare’s medical device tax.
Indiana’s medical research ‘trade deficit’
Indiana's life sciences companies are spending four times more on medical research than the state's hospitals, doctors and univerities are receiving from such companies for research projects. That means Indiana is missing out on more than $80 million a year.
Company news
Round 2 of the fight over a nursing home construction ban will commence in January when the Indiana General Assembly convenes for its new session. Sen. Pat Miller, R-Indianapolis, told IBJ she will introduce a bill that would institute a three-year “moratorium” on construction of skilled nursing facilities. The moratorium is widely favored by nursing […]
Company news
Major Hospital is seeking public input on its plans to build a $100 million hospital on the northern edge of Shelbyville, according to The Shelbyville News. The plans, which Major executives have been mulling since 2003, call for a 240,000-square-foot facility that would connect to Major’s Benesse Oncology Center in the Intelliplex business park. Major has also opened orthopedic, cardiology and OBGYN centers in the park. Major’s inpatient hospital in the center of Shelbyville has 72 beds, but the vast majority of the care Major provides is on an outpatient basis. Major has already begun to solicit bids from construction firms and bond rating agencies. CEO Jack Horner said the Major Hopsital board could make a decision on building a new hospital by October.
St. Vincent Heart Center wants to build a helipad about a half-mile from the specialty hospital. Currently, helicopter ambulances transporting cardiovascular patients must land at a borrowed facility a couple of miles north, on the opposite side of heavily traveled U.S. 31—adding as much as 20 minutes to the trip. Carmel’s Board of Zoning Appeals denied a similar request back in 2008, saying the proposed location was too close to nearby neighborhoods. But the newly proposed location at 10202 N. Meridian St. is less residential. The now-vacant land was once the home of Pilgrim Lutheran Church, which moved to 106th Street in 2012 to make way for the U.S. 31/I-465 interchange improvements now under construction. The zoning board is scheduled to consider the request at its Aug. 25 meeting.
Warsaw-based Symmetry Medical Inc. plans to sell off the orthopedics components subsidiary that generates nearly 80 percent of its revenue, according to Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly. Massachusetts-based Tecomet, which is part of Genstar Capital, has agreed to pay $450 million for the OEM Solutions subsidiary. As part of the sale, Symmetry Medical will transfer ownership of its surgical instrument business, Symmetry Surgical, to the company’s shareholders and turn Symmetry Surgical into a newly traded public company. Shareholders would get one share of the new company for every four shares of Symmetry Medical stock. OEM Solutions generated nearly $81 million in revenue in the second quarter. Symmetry Surgical, meanwhile, saw $20.4 million in second-quarter revenue, down 8.7 percent from a year earlier.
WellPoint Inc.’s California subsidiary has partnered with the not-for-profit health plan Blue Shield of California to pay $80 million to launch a medical data sharing portal, according to the Associated Press. The California Integrated Data Exchange, known as Cal INDEX, is designed to share patients’ medical claims records electronically among doctors and hospitals, even for emergency room patients. Mark Morgan, president of WellPoint’s Anthem Blue Cross plan in California, said the health plans will mimic successful models such as the New York e-Health Collaborative and Indiana Health Information Exchange. The health plans’ information from patients' billing claims could supplement treatment records in the 30 health information exchanges health care providers have already created in California.
A dose of light reading
Starting with this post, I’m going to periodically give you a peek at my reading list. I’ll highlight reports and reportage that I have found either helpful or provocative. I hope you do, too.
Zimmer predicts it will pick up steam this year
The Warsaw-based maker of orthopedic implants posted flat revenue and modest profit growth in 2012, but it expects revenues to grow this year by 2.5 percent to 4.5 percent.
Zimmer trims full-year forecast after quarterly profit falls
The Warsaw-based maker of orthopedic implants beat analysts’ estimates with its third-quarter earnings, but lowered its full-year forecast.
Biomet gives ortho industry hope
The skies got a little brighter for the orthopedic industry on Friday after Warsaw-based Biomet Inc. reported strong quarterly sales growth of 3.4 percent. That news sparked a small surge in the stock prices of two other Warsaw-based orthopedics companies.
Orthopedic startups attracting big money
The Warsaw area is well-known as the home of gigantic orthopedic implant companies and their suppliers. But now a handful of startups have been able to raise nearly $25 million in equity investments despite the recession—putting a bit more fuel into a fairly stagnant entrepreneurial sector.
Q&A
Tino Pereira, CEO of Canada-based Iotron Industries, discussed the electron-beam facility his company opened March 15 in Columbia City, which lies halfway between Fort Wayne and Warsaw in northern Indiana. Iotron already helps some of the orthopedic implant makers in Warsaw alter the strength, flexibility or surface conditions of the materials in the joint replacements they make. That makes its services important in research and development for new products.
Indiana’s medical device workforce will need skills upgrade
A new report by BioCrossroads says 53 percent of the 20,000 jobs in Indiana’s medical-device sector require no more than a high school education.
Ortho firms pull back on doc payments
The number of payments in excess of $1 million didn’t change substantially from year to year, but orthopedic companies sharply cut their fees to surgeons who received the smallest amounts.
Company news
Looks like Roche Diagnostics Corp. is finally getting clear of its troubles at the FDA. On Thursday, Switzerland-based Roche announced it won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a new test strip that works with its Accu-Chek Aviva blood glucose monitors. Roche developed the new strip because its previous version of test strips used an enzyme that, in rare cases, could give a falsely high blood sugar reading. A falsely high reading, if acted upon with a correspondingly high dose of insulin, could be harmful or even fatal to some patients. The concerns of the FDA have kept Roche Diagnostics, which maintains its U.S. headquarters in Indianapolis, from getting new blood glucose monitor products approved in the United States, costing Roche market share here. For example, its Aviva Nano meter, which has sold well in Europe, has never hit the market in the United States. “This clearance is a significant milestone for our organization—one that will position us well for the clearance of other products in our pipeline," said Daniel O’Day, chief operating officer of Roche Diagnostics.
After trudging through nearly three years of soft demand, the Warsaw-based makers of orthopedic hip and knee implants—Zimmer, Biomet and DePuy—are unlikely to see a worldwide recovery before the end of 2012, according to a new report from Leerink Swann & Co. Analysts Rick Wise and Richard Newitter think the debt issues in Europe, the uncertain economy in the United States, and global economic pressures will lead many patients to continue to defer their hip or knee surgeries. “Looking out over the next 12-18 months, we are inclined to take a more cautious view regarding a possible growth rebound in large joint procedure volumes,” the analysts wrote. They predict a shrinkage in those surgeries in the third quarter of 0.2 percent and then modest fourth-quarter growth of 1.2 percent.
If this was meant to boost the stock price, it isn’t working. Since launching a $100 million share repurchase program in May, Carmel-based CNO Financial Group Inc. has purchased nearly 8.8 million common shares for a total of $55.7 million, the company announced last week. Also, for every dollar CNO spends buying its own stock, it also has to spend a dollar paying down its bank loans. But since the life and health insurer launched the repurchase program on May 16, CNO’s share price has fallen 29 percent, closing Friday at $5.41. Over the same time period, the broad Russell 3000 index has fallen 17 percent.
Orthopedics company plans $27M Indiana project
Warsaw-based DePuy Orthopaedics expects to spend $20 million on manufacturing equipment and $7 million on research and development equipment and have it installed before 2014.