Conseco, Inc. has agreed to pay as much as $6.3 million in fines and restitution to settle an investigation by insurance regulators in Indiana and four other states into its handling of claims, complaints and marketing of its long-term care policies. The Carmel-based insurance company said today that the settlement affects customers of two subsidiaries: […]
In a story rich with irony, Cigna HealthCare is threatening to kick the St. Francis hospital chain out of Sagamore Health Network, the very managed care network that Cigna bought last year from St. Francis and other hospital groups. The dispute comes after health insurance giant Cigna and Sagamore failed to negotiate a new reimbursement […]
Leadership has its rewards Health info exchange is exhibit A Being the best isn’t everything, but it goes a long way when you’re trying to attract money and expertise. That’s why it’s significant that the Indiana Health Information Exchange is taking its show on the road. As IBJ reporter J.K. Wall reported last week, those who oversee the platform for sharing patient records and test results electronically are preparing to make it available in other states. Hospitals and physicians in…
Deaconess Health System in Evansville might buy Welborn Clinic, which has nine locations in Evansville and surrounding counties, according to the Evansville Courier & Press. Neither side confirmed the merger, but one Deaconess official said talks of a sale have been ongoing. The clinic has about 650 employees, including physicians. Deaconess employs more than 3,000 […]
Four years after its launch, the Indiana Health Information Exchange is laying the groundwork to take its game outside state
borders. The Indianapolis-based not-for-profit offers a service that provides patient records and test results via computer
to hospitals and doctors around central Indiana. But now, its leaders think they can take their expertise to other cities
and help them develop their own health information exchanges.
When then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani hired David Gunn to direct the New York City subway system, he knew Gunn would be unorthodox in his approach to fighting crime. While many encouraged Gunn to use traditional lawenforcement tactics, he saw fit to clean up the subway’s crime problem by literally cleaning up the trains. Day after day for six years, the graffiti artists painted their “art” on the sides of the trains, and day after day Gunn had the graffiti cleaned off…
Service Employees International Union Local 3 is backing local janitors as they restart contract negotiations April 16 with
five of the largest janitorial contractors in Indianapolis. SEIU now is taking direct aim at Lilly, health insurer WellPoint
Inc. and even some local hospitals, hoping they will pressure the janitorial contractors to come to terms.
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…
My wife, Janie, and I made some new friends on our recent trip to Israel, including Moira Carlstedt, president of the Indianapolis Neighborhood Housing Partnership. I happily cede my space this week for her observations of the trip. It is like any hospital room in Indianapolis-except you can see the Lebanese border from the window, and you stand amid damage from a Hezbollah rocket that tore through that window. And then you understand the need for the underground hospital that…
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 […]
The CEO of locally based Lauth Group Inc. says most people he knows in the business, even the steely types who always project
optimism, are privately nervous about the economic morass that began with a collapse in subprime mortgages.
I’ve been looking over some business polls from 2007 and 2008, and I have to tell you I’m disappointed. As a technology columnist, I’d hoped that companies would be perpetually lathered over all sorts of thorny technical issues that only new purchases could solve and that I could critique. Silly me. But still, I went into the exercise with high hopes. After all, isn’t every aspect of a business permeated by breakable, worrisome technology of all kinds? And doesn’t every…
Property tax reform took center stage during the just-completed session of the Indiana General Assembly. But lawmakers also grappled with a host of other measures with business implications. A roundup appears below. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT One of the session’s most divisive issues-whether to penalize companies that hire illegal immigrants-died during the waning hours. Under the legislation, introduced by Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel, companies could have had their business licenses suspended, or revoked after three instances. The Senate and House passed…
Professional and collegiate basketball are on the brink of a landmark agreement that hoops insiders said will change the landscape
of the sport in this country. Proponents say it would be good for basketball, but others say it’s an attempt to further commercialize
the sport.
The “father of health savings accounts” isn’t satisfied. At 80, J. Patrick Rooney is gearing up for another health care reform
battle in Washington–five years after winning a colossal victory when Congress awarded health savings accounts tax-free status.
* Health program in Indiana To Randy Reichmann, warning workers about unhealthy lifestyles was nothing new. But it took just four words for a new wellness program from Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield to grab his attention: free gym membership-citywide. “You can’t just say, that’s bad for you. You have to say what you’re going to do that’s good for you,” said Reichmann, president of the Indianapolis region for Old National Bank. The Evansville-based bank is the first Indiana employer…
Indianapolis developer Lauth Group Inc. is letting go of dozens of employees in its second round of layoffs this year. A spokesman for the Lauth, which had frantically added employees in recent years to manage a booming development pipeline, said the economy is to blame for the reverse in course. “As a direct result of […]
