2010 WOMAN OF INFLUENCE: Dr. Lisa E. Harris
Harris oversees the sprawling Wishard system, which includes more than 1,000 physicians and provides health care to almost two-thirds of Marion County’s uninsured.
Harris oversees the sprawling Wishard system, which includes more than 1,000 physicians and provides health care to almost two-thirds of Marion County’s uninsured.
The president of Community Hospital East brings a lifelong interest in helping the needy to her duties as administrator. During her career she’s done everything from oversee the opening of the Jane Pauley Community Health Center to working as a staff physician in a Michigan homeless shelter.
Lewis has been responsible for health insurance giant WellPoint’s provider relations, care and disease management, information management, personal health guidance companies, and its pharmacy solutions group.
Five Indiana doctors made the list of drug-company favorites in a recent report by New York-based ProPublica. Carmel psychiatrist Chris Bojrab pulled in nearly $160,000, with the lion’s share coming from Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. and its antidepressant Cymbalta. Lafayette allergist Ketan Sheth was a close second, earning $159,225 from United Kingdom-based GlaxoSmithKline plc. Other doctors on ProPublica’s list: Indianapolis hematologist Maureen A. Cooper, who made $140,000, mostly from Cephalon; Terre Haute endocrinologist Isaiah Pittman, $126,000 mostly from Lilly; and Zionsville family physician Daniel Lynn Shull took home $102,000, nearly all of it from Lilly. After Lilly started disclosing its payments to doctors last year, Bojrab defended the pay for speaking on behalf of drug companies as well-earned. “We’re certainly well-compensated for what we do,” he said, adding that the pay is about 20-percent higher than what he would earn seeing patients. But it also requires a fair bit of work, especially arranging travel details. “It’s not uncommon for me to come home and spend three or four hours a night, just to work out the travel details,” he said. “And it’s not like the work that you had to do goes away.”
St. Francis Hospital & Health Centers has acquired the Immediate Care Centers' four Indianapolis-area locations: 1001 N. Madison Ave., 650 N. Girls School Road, 860 E. 86th St. and 992 N. Mitthoeffer Road. The centers were launched in 1981 by Bloomington-based Unity Physician Group. About 100,000 patients visit the centers each year. St. Francis, whose parent organization is based in Mishawaka, is the fourth-largest hospital system in the Indianapolis area.
A new professional service center on the northwest side of Indianapolis will employ 500 people to support the 70 hospitals operated by St. Louis-based Ascension Health. The Catholic not-for-profit organization is the parent of Indianapolis-based hospital system St. Vincent Health, which operates 19 hospitals around Indiana, including its flaghship campus on West 86th Street. St. Vincent employs more than 13,000 Hoosiers. The $10.9 million center is expected to open next summer and ramp up to peak employment by 2013. To lure the investment, the Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered Ascension up to $5 million in performance-based tax credits and up to $90,000 in training grants based on the company's job-creation plans. Develop Indy and the city of Indianapolis offered Ascension Health infrastructure support and a training grant worth up to $300,000. Develop Indy also will support a property-tax-abatement request before the Metropolitan Development Commission.
Orthopedic implant maker Zimmer Holdings Inc. saw its third-quarter profit climb 27 percent on lower operating expenses. The results beat Wall Street estimates, but Zimmer cut its estimate for revenue growth. The Warsaw-based company reported net income of $191.1 million, or 96 cents per share, up from $149.9 million, or 70 cents per share, a year ago. Sales fell 1 percent to $965 million. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected, on average, earnings of 95 cents per share on $994.7 million in revenue. Zimmer narrowed its full-year profit forecast to a range of $4.24 to $4.29 per share. The company had previously set full-year expectations for profit between $4.15 and $4.35 per share. It also trimmed its estimate of revenue growth on a constant currency basis for the year to 2 percent versus an earlier projection of 3-percent to 5-percent growth.
Indianapolis-based Dow AgroSciences improved revenue during the third quarter, thanks to a 26-percent increase in volume, but it still recorded a loss for the period. The unit of Michigan-based Dow Chemical Co. on Thursday reported revenue of $948 million, up 19 percent from the same period last year, despite lower prices. Quarterly earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, however, were a loss of $12 million—compared with a profit of $5 million a year ago. Dow Agro’s selling, general and administrative expenses increased 9 percent during the quarter because of new product launches and commercial activities related to recent seed acquisitions, the company said. Its research and development costs were up 14 percent.
Last November I was hospitalized with H1N1 and pneumonia. In January I had a biopsy that confirmed non-small-cell lung cancer, stage IV.
In Utah, employers can give each of their workers a specific amount of money to apply toward health insurance. The worker then can use that money to choose from the 66 plans in the health insurance exchange.
Eli Lilly and Co.’s $800 million acquisition of Avid Radiopharmaceuticals Inc. is the biggest step yet in the drugmaker’s attempt to add diagnostics to its product portfolio.
Could nurse practitioners get a promotion in the medical field? At least one health insurer is treating them like doctors now.
Pharmaceutical firms led by Eli Lilly are trying to eliminate a government panel aimed at controlling Medicare spending seven months after they supported the health-care overhaul that created it.
The Indianapolis-based drugmaker finally won FDA approval for its antidepressant Cymbalta to treat chronic pain and fended off a patent challenge to rising-star cancer drug Alimta, but got a ratings downgrade on its debt.
West Lafayette-based Kylin Therapeutics Inc. received a nearly $250,000 grant from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service that will advance the company's nanoparticle cancer-treatment research. Kylin's technology uses RNA and a natural process called RNA interference to directly target and "turn off" disease-causing genes. Kylin’s technology was discovered at Purdue University by former Purdue professor Peixuan Guo.
Lilly Ventures, the venture-capital arm of Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co., led a $24 million investment round in Massachusetts-based Cerulean Pharmaceuticals, which is developing nanoparticle drugs. According to Xeconomy.com, the Series C funding round will help Cerulean pay for Phase 2 clinical trials of its leading nanoparticle drug, which is designed to treat lung cancer. Steve Hall, a venture partner at Lilly, has joined Cerulean’s board of directors in connection with the funding round. Cerulean has now raised $56 million in venture capital.
Johnson Memorial Hospital asked county officials to approve a $14 million expansion of its surgical center to accommodate larger surgery suites, as well as new recovery beds and physician offices, according to the Daily Journal of Franklin. That expansion would add 29,000 square feet and renovate 9,300 square feet of existing space. Johnson Memorial wants to start construction in the spring and complete the project by late summer of 2012.
The form an alliance would take is not clear, but Westview looked for additional resources from city’s four major hospital systems.
The Mishawaka-based health system’s move comes after months of consumer research—and six months after rival system Clarian Health said it would change its name to Indiana University Health.
Clarian Health has been growing faster than its peers in the Indianapolis market the past five years and is now generating healthy margins, according to a report this month by Moody’s Investors Service.
Indianapolis-area hospitals have negotiated reimbursement rates with private health insurers that are two and three times higher than those paid by the federal Medicare program, suggesting the hospitals have the upper hand over insurers, according to a new study.
Eli Lilly and Co. said that next year, for the first time, it would hire an outside firm to search for state disciplinary actions against its hired speakers and advisers, after reporting by New York-based ProPublica found that Lilly was paying more than 100 physicians who had been under state sanctions. Indianapolis-based Lilly and British firm GlaxoSmithKline plc had the most state-sanctioned physicians among their speakers and advisers out of the seven pharmaceutical companies that ProPublica scrutinized. For example, Lilly used cardiologist Ali Sherzoy as a speaker, paying him more than $4,300 in the first two quarters of this year. But Sherzoy had his license suspended in New York and New Jersey early this year after he pleaded guilty to one count of criminal sexual contact in 2008. Sherzoy said the matter involved his family's nanny and not his practice. He said he pleaded guilty on his lawyer's advice to put the matter behind him.
A trade group of health insurers, which includes Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc., gave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce $86.2 million in August 2009 to wage a campaign against the health reform law being debated by Congress, according to Bloomberg News. The bill eventually was passed and became law in March 2010. The money came from America’s Health Insurance Plans and exceeded its entire budget for the previous year, according to Bloomberg. The $86.2 million paid for advertisements, polling and grass-roots events to drum up opposition to the bill. The Chamber said in a statement it used the funds to “advance a market-based health care system and advocate for fundamental reform that would improve access to quality care while lowering costs.” A WellPoint spokesman declined to comment to Bloomberg.
Teams of researchers at Indiana University and Purdue University both made striking medical breakthroughs recently. Purdue researchers found evidence that an environmental pollutant may play an important role in causing multiple sclerosis and that a hypertension drug might be used to treat the disease. They noticed that the toxin acrolein was elevated by about 60 percent in the spinal cord tissues of mice with a disease similar to multiple sclerosis. Acrolein is found in tobacco smoke and auto exhaust. Previous studies by this research team found that neuronal death caused by acrolein can be prevented by administering the hypertension drug hydralazine, also known as Apresoline. At the IU School of Medicine, researchers induced a complete remission of metastatic melanoma in mice when they introduced a potent anti-tumor gene into the stem cells in bone marrow that produce all blood and immune system cells. IU’s research has now led to a small clinical trial of 12 patients in late 2011.
L.H. Medical Corp. will add 65 jobs in Fort Wayne by 2013 as it expands its production of custom medical-device components for the orthopedic implant industry. The company will move to a new facility and begin hiring manufacturing workers and engineers early next year. Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered L.H. Medical up to $550,000 in performance-based tax credits and up to $60,000 in training grants. Also, Allen County officials will consider an additional property tax abatement.
Sisters of St. Francis Health Services Inc., which operates three hospitals in the Indianapolis area, has decided to change its name to Franciscan Alliance. The Mishawaka-based system, which has 13 hospitals in Indiana and Illinois, announced the decision of its board of directors Monday morning. The announcement comes after months of consumer research—and six months after rival system Clarian Health said it would change its name to Indiana University Health. Beginning in early 2011, all St. Francis hospitals will have the name Franciscan added to their logos, with the previous name of each hospital written below it.
Dr. Heather Maria Greist, an internist, has established a practice with St. Francis Medical Group Rheumatology & Osteoporosis Specialists, located on the St. Francis Hospital-Indianapolis campus. Greist earned her medical degree at the Indiana University School of Medicine; she also holds degrees from Purdue University and Vanderbilt University.
Dr. Robert Prince, an anesthesiologist, has joined the St. Francis Medical Group Spine Specialists, located on the St. Francis-Indianapolis campus. He is the former chief of the Department of Anesthesia and Pain at Riverside Tappahannock Hospital (Virginia) and at St. Anthony’s Hospital in Effingham, Ill.
Dr. Cindy De Neira has established a practice with St. Francis Medical Group Plainfield Family Medicine. De Neira earned a doctorate in osteopathic medicine at Des Moines University in Iowa. She also holds degrees in nutrition and chemistry from the University of Florida.
Timothy Gee has been appointed director of cardiovascular practices for St. Francis Medical Group. In that role, Gee will oversee operations at Indiana Heart Physicians and Vascular Surgeons. Previously, he was a business consultant for Indianapolis Medical Management.
Interest in primary care has fallen off markedly due partly to relatively low pay.
Five students at Indiana University School of Medicine contemplate whether to opt for family practice or a specialty.