Search Results

California-based Beckman Coulter Inc., which employs more than 500 people in the Indianapolis area, is up for sale, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company has hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to investigate a sale. After the Journal’s report, the company’s market value neared $5 billion. Potential buyers include private-equity firms such as the Blackstone Group and Apollo Global Management, or other companies in the medical-device industry, such as Illinois-based Abbott Laboratories, Germany-based Siemens or even Roche Diagnostics Corp. a Swiss company that operates its North American headquarters out of Indianapolis. Beckman’s testing machines are used in hospitals and medical research labs. In 2007, it moved more than 200 jobs to Indianapolis as it relocated its centrifuge development and manufacturing facilities. In October, Beckman announced plans to add 95 more jobs in Indianapolis over the next three years.

What is it about White County? In the same month that White County Memorial Hospital said it’s ready to merge with Indianapolis-based Clarian Health, now White County’s Monticello Medical Center is selling its four-physician family practice to St. Elizabeth Regional Health in Lafayette. St. Elizabeth is part of the Franciscan Alliance, which operates the three St. Francis hospitals in the Indianapolis area. Monticello, the White County seat, is about 30 miles north of Lafayette. St. Elizabeth will employ the four physicians, as well as three nurse practitioners, who collectively serve the largest percentage of White County residents. Locking up family practitioners is key for hospitals right now as they try to form themselves into “accountable care organizations” that will be paid by Medicare and private insurers for managing the long-term health of patients. Medicare’s rules will require accountable care organizations to provide family, or primary, care to at least 5,000 patients.

Indiana University’s health care budget will fall $24.9 million short of projected expenses in 2011-12, according to the Herald-Times of Bloomington, as a low-deductible Anthem Blue Access health care plan has become too expensive to offer to its 18,000 employees. IU trustee Tom Reilly Jr. implied that employees need to cover some of the extra costs.

Eli Lilly and Co. suspended a Phase 3 clinical trial of a skin-cancer drug after 12 patients in the study died, according to Bloomberg News. The deaths, among the 300 patients in the study, “may be treatment-related,” said Amy Sousa, a Lilly spokeswoman. Lilly was testing tasisulam on patients whose skin cancer had spread and who didn’t benefit from earlier treatment. No new or existing patients will be given the drug while the company evaluates safety data for the trial. But Lilly will continue to study tasisulam against breast, ovarian and renal cancers and against soft-tissue sarcoma, the company said.

The Indiana 21st Century Research and Technology Fund received $2.6 million from the December sale of Marcadia Biotech to Roche Diagnostics Corp. That represented a 30-percent total return on the state’s $2 million investment in the company. It is the first time the 21st Century Fund has reaped a return on one of the grants it gives to startup companies since the fund rewrote its investment rules five years ago. Before that, it simply made grants that did not have to be repaid if a company hit it big.

Hoosier Village Retirement Center in Zionsville announced plans Monday for a $32 million project that will expand its campus near Interstate 465 and Michigan Road. Hoosier Village plans a 90-unit apartment complex to replace its original residence hall, which was constructed in the 1960s, renovated in the 1990s and expanded in 2001. Hoosier Village currently has 197 independent-living units on its 150-acre campus. Plans also call for a “Memory Support Center,” licensed for residential care of residents with Alzheimer’s and other dementia-related conditions. It will have 36 private rooms and 7,500 square feet of common areas. In addition, the expansion will add a 23,700-square-foot dining center with a 250-person seating capacity, and a community center with exercise rooms, a fitness center, indoor swimming pool and locker rooms. Hoosier Village is a not-for-profit community operated by Baptist Homes of Indiana Inc. The expansion, which should begin this spring and conclude in 2013, will allow the center to add 50 full-time workers. The project is awaiting approval from the Zionsville Planning Department.

Indianapolis-based Arcadia Resources Inc. signed a three-month pilot agreement with the Cleveland Clinic under which the hospital system will use Arcadia’s DailyMed program to help chronically ill patients take their medications after being released from a hospital, thereby reducing readmissions. DailyMed dispenses a monthly cycle of a patient’s prescriptions, over-the-counter medications and vitamins, and organizes them into pre-sorted packets marked with the date and time they should be taken. Also, DailyMed pharmacists call patients, as well as their primary-care doctors and caregivers to encourage medication compliance and avoid drug interactions.

Nearly 300 physicians from Indianapolis-based Community Physicians of Indiana and Evansville-based Deaconess Clinic have joined a research network run by HealthCore Inc., a subsidiary of Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. The Integrated Research Network uses physicians to study drugs, devices, diagnostics and medical methods to see if real-world applications differ from results produced in clinical trials. HealthCore combines its study results with WellPoint’s records on the 33 million Americans it insures. The Deaconess Clinic has about 90 physicians in its multi-specialty physician group. Community Physicians of Indiana employs about 200 general practice physicians for the Community Health Network hospital system. The HealthCore network is currently exploring several opportunities in the areas of heart failure, pain syndromes, antibiotic resistance, Type 2 diabetes and breast cancer.