A Marion County judge has frozen certain Hansen & Horn Group Inc. funds after the Indianapolis homebuilder failed to pay
a $183,000 legal judgment. The move sheds light on the severity
of the company’s woes.
Doctors for Patient Care says doctors and patients need to get involved in the current debate over health care to preserve the good qualities of the current health care system while fixing its problems.
The unsustainable
system of health care that we now find ourselves participating in has been decades in the making. What makes us think we can
fix it—really fix it—overnight?
Dr. Jane Fesenmeier, a pediatrician, has joined St. Vincent Physician Network in Brownsburg. Prior to joining St. Vincent, she served as a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine.
Dr. Keith Cushing, a neurologist at Indianapolis-based Josephson, Wallack, Munshower Neurology, has begun practicing at Johnson Memorial Hospital’s medical office building in Franklin.
Connie Brandes, a registered nurse, has been appointed director of ambulatory services at St. Francis Hospital & Health Centers. She will oversee the hospital’s occupational health, renal dialysis and wound-care departments. She formerly directed the hospital’s emergency and ambulatory nursing services. Jason Kaufman, a registered nurse, has been appointed to replace Brandes as director of emergency services.
Sondra K. Hutchison, a registered nurse, has been named manager of occupational health at St. Francis Hospital & Health Centers. Previously, she worked at Arnett Clinic Occupational Health in Lafayette.
Indiana companies achieved second- and third-place finishes in Purdue University’s life sciences business plan competition
this year. Nano-Rad LLC, based in West Lafayette, won $36,000 for being runner-up. It is developing low-dose
radiation therapy for zapping edges of tumors left over after surgery. The third-place finisher was Lafayette-based Glytrix
Inc. It won $14,000 for its plan for therapies that reduce skin scarring after surgery. The winner was Massachusetts-based
Novophage Technology, which is developing a corneal-repair device for patients’ eyes as an alternative to expensive
corneal transplants. It took home $30,000.
Indianapolis-based Dow AgroSciences,
still a bit player in the seed business, continues to partner with its larger rivals to expand its market presence. Dow Agro,
a subsidiary of Michigan-based Dow Chemical Co., signed a non-exclusive licensing agreement to share its herbicide-tolerant
trait for soybeans with Delaware-based DuPont and its Pioneer unit. In exchange, Pioneer is licensing non-exclusively its
Optimum GAT herbicide-tolerant trait for soybeans to Dow Agro. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.
St.
Vincent Health and OrthoIndy are the latest hospital and physician groups to run into each others’
arms in response to the reform winds coming out of Washington, D.C. The Indianapolis-based organizations announced Friday
they will create a management company to handle physician work at St. Vincent’s hospitals in Indianapolis. St. Vincent also
acquired a minority stake in OrthoIndy’s orthopedic hospital, located a few miles west of St. Vincent’s flagship facility
on West 86th Street. All doctors face a 21-percent cut to Medicare reimbursement next year unless Congress steps in to change
it, which it has done in the past. And with Congress spending nearly $1 trillion to expand health insurance coverage, doctors
have small hopes that reimbursement from federal programs will reverse their recent trends of falling or staying flat.
“Clearly, when we did this transaction, we had an eye on health care reform,” said John Martin, CEO of OrthoIndy,
a group of more than 70 physicians who specialize in bone, joint and spine therapy.
Arcadia
Resources Inc. lost $4.1 million, or 3 cents per share, in the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with a loss of $3.2
million, or 2 cents per share, in the same quarter a year earlier. Revenue fell 4 percent, to $25.6 million. Indianapolis-based
Arcadia is trying to grow its DailyMed pharmaceutical service, which packages the right dosages of prescriptions into individual
packets, to make it easier for patients on numerous medications to stick to their regimens. Arcadia announced Monday it is
rolling out DailyMed in California. While Arcadia’s pharmacy revenue grew slower than expected, it still soared 181 percent
over the same quarter last year, to $3.4 million. Profit margins in that business also grew to 15.1 percent, up from 11.1
percent in the previous quarter.
The National Institutes of Health have given $1.3 million to Indiana
University to establish the East African Center of Excellence in Health Informatics. The new center will help East
African countries use electronic health records to increase the efficiency and quality of health care.
The specter of declining reimbursement, as well as the desire for statewide growth, lie behind St. Vincent Health’s decision
to form a physician management firm with OrthoIndy and buy a minority stake in its Indiana Orthopaedic Hospital.
St. Vincent Health has acquired a minority interest in Indiana Orthopaedic Hospital and is in discussions with OrthoIndy physicians
and other independent doctors to create a management company that would oversee orthopaedic and spine services at St. Vincent
Indianapolis. The health care providers announced the deal early Friday.
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Indiana is doling out $3.1 million to Indianapolis-area doctors—its first payments
based on a local quality measuring system.
Indianapolis-based Arcadia Resources Inc. has appointed former Indianapolis Mayor Steve Goldsmith to its
board of directors. Goldsmith, who served as mayor from 1992 to 2000, is a professor in the American
Government Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He will replace Tres Lund, a
major Arcadia shareholder.
Dr. Christine Davis has joined St. Vincent Physician
Network in Indianapolis. The internist received her medical degree from the University of Louisville
School of Medicine.
Community Health Network promoted Jon Fohrer to CEO of its ambulatory
services. He has served as network vice president of ambulatory services since November 2002 and led the orthopedic
service line since 2006. Fohrer holds a bachelor’s degree from Ball State University and an MBA from Butler University.
Indianapolis-based Clarian Health has named Mike Yost its executive director of marketing. Yost was
a brand leader at locally based Eli Lilly and Co. for its Zyprexa and Cymbalta drugs.
Clarian also named attorney Tory Castor its vice president of government affairs. Castor worked at Hays
Murray Castor LLP and Bingham McHale.
By year’s end, Americans will have access via a Web site to a new database that will allow them to track what Indianapolis-based
WellPoint Inc. and other health insurers pay doctors who are not in their pre-negotiated networks, according to Bloomberg
News.
The not-for-profit database is being funded with $100 million in legal settlements from 12 health insurers
as part of a lawsuit by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.
He said insurers were using
the Ingenix database, owned by Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare, which used faulty data in order to reduce payments to doctors,
which left patients with larger bills.
The 12 insurers have agreed to use the database, hosted at Syracuse University,
to set the rates they’ll pay when their customers receive services from physicians that are “out of network,”
which means the doctor has not agreed in advance to give the insurer a discount.
WellPoint settled with Cuomo by
agreeing to pay $10 million. UnitedHealthcare paid the most: $50 million.
Eli Lilly and Co.’s Byetta won a new market approval, which the company hopes will reverse the diabetes
drug’s recent sales decline. But the drug also was the subject of a new alert about kidney problems in patients taking
the drug. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration OK’d Byetta to be used sooner in patients suffering from poor blood
sugar control. But the FDA also told doctors to be alert about kidney problems of some patients taking Byetta.
Before, the FDA called for Byetta to be used only after patients tried other drugs without success. Byetta, which Lilly sells
via a partnership with San Diego-based Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc., suffered a 5-percent decline in U.S. sales in the 12 months
year, to $171 million in the third quarter. Worldwide Byetta sales totaled $593 million through
the first nine months of this year, a 5-percent increase compared with the same period in 2008.
Lilly
also will trim 191 sales jobs in Indiana as part of a company-wide restructuring announced in September that ultimately
will result in 5,500 job cuts by the end of 2011. The pharmaceutical giant will trim its osteoporosis, diabetes and neuroscience
sales forces, which are listed as working out of the Lilly Technology Center on South Harding Street. The workers’ last day
will be Dec. 31.
Local health care information technology professionals will discuss efforts to bring Indiana health
care into the digital age at a breakfast meeting on Friday. The panelists will include Jane Niederberger, president of Indianapolis-based
My Health Care Manager LLC, Stacy Cook, a physician attorney at
the Indianapolis law firm of Barnes & Thornburg LLP, Michael E. Rudicle, a director at
the local office of New York-based accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, and Jack Horner, CEO of Major
Hospital in Shelbyville. The meeting, part of the New Economy New Rules series, will be held at the downtown offices
of the Barnes & Thornburg law firm.
Wishard Foundation said it has received a $6 million
grant from the Indianapolis-based Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation
to help fund construction of a new Wishard Hospital. Voters on Tuesday approved a new $754 million hospital
for Wishard Health Services. The $6 million grant is the single largest philanthropic contribution Wishard
has received in its 150-year history.
The FDA said a new titanium implant
to re-stabilize the spine, made by Zimmer Holdings Inc., showed good
results in a clinical trial. But the FDA also noted that physicians who had received consulting payments from Warsaw-based
Zimmer turned in patient results better than physicians who were not paid by Zimmer, according to the Associated Press. The
FDA noted the correlation was not statistically significant, but it will asks a panel of orthopedic specialists to weigh in
on the new device and decide whether Zimmer should provide more data before approving it for sale. The agency is not required
to follow the group’s advice, though it usually does.
Federal health officials say an implant from Indiana-based Zimmer Holdings Inc. appears to be effective in treating spinal
problems, but questions remain about whether company payments to doctors influenced the device’s trial data.
The big goal of health care reform is to cut wasteful spending to pay for expanded health insurance coverage. But the way
the Senate Finance Committee bill tries to do that would be, according to some doctors, “disastrous.”
I would like to thank IBJ for highlighting the role of interdisciplinary (“bundled”) medicine in the
Oct. 19 article, “Huddling on Health Care.”
Some Indianapolis-area doctors fear a bill in the U.S. Senate would botch the way costs for tests and procedures are calculated, and ultimately
lead to a reimbursement system that works worse than the existing system.
This flu season looks to provide us an inkling of the real dangers inherent in large-scale health care reform, most especially
a full-blown national health care option.
File-hosting firm is launching new security software that could set it apart in a crowded field.
As health care legislation
continues to wend its way through Congress, Indianapolis-area industry leaders still harbor strong
opinions about the issue. Five industry insiders discussed how to improve the health care system during
IBJ’s Power Breakfast Sept. 25 at the Westin Indianapolis.
A peer-review panel of experts would help minimize unnecessary medical malpractice suits.
