Whirlpool is struggling with its employees in Evansville as it tries to keep a lid on escalating health
care costs.
The company says it has caught a few dozen of them smoking. That wouldnâ??t be a problem had the…
A West Lafayette research building used until a couple of years ago by Elkhart-based CTS Corp. has been acquired by a startup real estate company. The company, Indiana Technology Group LLC, is headquartered in West Lafayette. It is owned by five individuals, including principal and spokesman Ahmed Alsoffi, a long-time West Lafayette businessman. Other owners […]
Ask Cathy Molchan the cost of installing the electronic medical record system in a doctor’s office she administers, and she gives a clear, quantified answer: $80,000. Ask her whether the system saves the practice any money, and her answer is less concrete. “It can definitely save money because of the time savings,” said Molchan, practice administrator for Dr. Leo Bonaventura, an infertility specialist at Clarian North Medical Center. “You can actually be focused more on what you need to do,…
New patient satisfaction scores compiled by the federal government and posted online give consumers more feedback than ever regarding the care hospitals provide. The usefulness of that information is up for debate. On its Hospital Compare Web site, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services tracks technical measures that show how often hospitals provide certain types of care that is recommended for patients treated for various conditions-heart attacks or pneumonia, for instance. Starting late last month, the agency began including…
Building these facilities i n proven “growth markets” such as Boone and Hamilton counties, however, should prove more prosperous, insists St. Vincent CEO Vincent Caponi. A more upscale demographic is the telling factor. Yet, the network of hospitals is not about to abandon its purpose of serving the needy. “That doesn’t mean the poor and underserved aren’t going to be coming to our front door,” Caponi said. “That’s always been part of our mission. We will continue [to], and gladly,…
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Jones, I can no longer be your doctor-at least not this side of the county line.” Patients would no doubt find it strange to hear these words from their family doctor, but longstanding law in Indiana says doctors may enter into noncompetition agreements that prohibit them from treating patients in certain geographic areas for a limited time. In March, the Indiana Supreme Court issued its first comprehensive ruling on physician noncompetition agreements in more than 20 years…
WellPoint Inc. will no longer reimburse hospitals for serious preventable errors, the Indianapolis-based health insurer announced today. WellPoint’s first phase of the initiative includes 11 preventable adverse events and will be modified and expanded in the future. WellPoint said no one should be charged for the three most serious errors: performing the wrong kind of […]
Doctors have taken a second look at the nation’s health care ills and changed their diagnosis. Their new prescription? National, government-funded health insurance. That’s the upshot of a survey conducted by researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. They found that 59 percent of America’s doctors now favor a national system of […]
Most free-lance writers eke out a living. The most fortunate live comfortable lives. But Mindy Mascaro turned her freelance writing business into a thriving company. Carmel-based ExaroMed LLC is now producing sales and marketing content for the like of Roche Diagnostics, Eli Lilly and Co. and Amgen Inc. It has also served smaller life sciences companies such as Indigo BioSciences Inc. and Cheetah Medical Inc. The company has zoomed from six employees to 20 in the last year. It’s already…
Witham Health Services and St. Vincent Health will build a 42,500-square-foot medical facility inside the Anson development in Boone County, the two hospitals announced today. The new facility will cost $10 million to $12 million to build and will feature a freestanding emergency department. It will operate 24 hours a day. Duke Realty Corp. and […]
Angie’s List quietly launched its health care ratings service on March 14 and will begin promoting it today. The Indianapolis company, which typically rates home repair services, will host an afternoon press conference about its foray into health care. It plans to send out an e-mail to its 600,000 customers as early as today. The […]
The practice of economics certainly can compel a man to cynicism. Take, for example, tax reform. I’ve testified on tax reform before legislatures in three states and one foreign country. Each had much bigger tax problems than does Indiana. Today, in each of those places, several solid proposals languish under the assault of special interests, much to the chagrin of taxpayers. Here in Indiana, the story is different. The past few months have seen reasoned and informed debate on property…
In 2003, Carmel-based Telamon Corp. hit rock bottom. So, founder Albert Chen returned to his roots. Taiwanese native Chen, 63, had spent two decades building his firm to serve telecommunications giants. But when the dot-com bubble burst, the telecom industry tanked along with it. Telamon-then Indiana’s largest minority-owned business-saw its annual revenue plummet $300 million, down from $456 million in 2001. Most managers would have chosen to shrink Telamon to reflect its new reality. But Chen doesn’t do mass layoffs….
When dentists Harold Smith and Ted Brauer built their new office, they constructed more than a third more space than they needed for patients. With the rest, Smith and Brauer started a health and wellness center that local not-for-profits can use free of charge. So in addition to the whir of drill motors, their Castleton office frequently resonates with sounds of cooking classes, “gymborees” for kids, health screenings and health-related seminars. “Excellence in dentistry is who we are. But we…
Clarian Health has acquired a controlling stake in a cardiology practice based at the Indiana Heart Hospital, which is owned
by Clarian competitor Community Health Network.
UnitedHealthcare has signed a three-year contract with the Indiana Orthopaedic Hospital, bringing the specialty hospital into UnitedHealthcare’s central Indiana network of health care providers. The contract, announced today, took effect on Feb. 1. It gives the orthopedic hospital “in-network” status, which typically means bigger discounts for UnitedHealthcare customers. OrthoIndy, a group of more 60 orthopedic […]
A large group of Bloomington doctors has reached an agreement in principle with Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Indiana that will keep the doctors in Anthem’s provider network. The agreement means Anthem customers will continue to receive discounted rates at Internal Medicine Associates, a group of 55 primary care physicians and five nurse […]
Community Health Network and health insurance giant UnitedHealthcare said today that they’ve settled their spat. UnitedHealthcare said it has negotiated a new multi-year contract with Community that gives its members ongoing access to the hospital network’s 170 physicians, along with access to its medical facilities. The facilities include Community hospitals east, north and south as […]
Health insurance companies including Indianapolis’ own WellPoint Inc. have been relentless in trying to suppress
spiraling health costs. So relentless, in fact, that doctors are pushing back.
Physician groups in Kokomo, Rushville and other cities are refusing to take new patients…
It could be another Prozac moment. Eli Lilly and Co. is pitching its next star antidepressant drug, Cymbalta, for approval to treat the poorly understood pain of fibromyalgia. Regulators OK’d a drug specifically for fibromyalgia for the first time in June. The approval of Pfizer Inc.’s Lyrica sparked hope in fibromyalgia patients and advocates that more doctors will come to understand and diagnose the tricky condition, now that they have a medicine to treat it. That’s what happened 20 years…
