A looming shortage of physicians is expected to hit Indiana hard in coming years. Experts say new residency slots could help, because residents tend to practice in the state where they did their residencies.
Doctors are reporting more burnout because of too many bureaucratic tasks, difficult patients and too many hours at work. But not all specialties are hit equally hard.
The Indiana University Board of Trustees and three of the school’s research officials filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday seeking to block part of the state’s new abortion law.
The school recently filed a motion seeking to intervene, claiming the law could subject researchers to criminal charges because they use fetal tissue for research into autism, Alzheimer's and other diseases.
It’s not polite to ask doctors how much they make. But this anonymous survey provides plenty of facts and figures.
Researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine think they have found a way to predict possible suicides using blood tests and questionnaires on tablet computers.
After an Elkhart couple with an autistic son sued insurer Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield this month, autism families around the state started a campaign to get Anthem to change its policy for covering therapy for school-age children.
In an effort to reduce Indiana’s shortage of psychiatrists, Community Health Network will establish a psychiatry residency program in 2016 to provide specialized training to recent medical school graduates. According to Community, 43 of Indiana’s 92 counties have no practicing psychiatrist. “Based on the state’s population, there should be 650 psychiatrists in Indiana, but in […]
Five Indianapolis-area hospitals stand to lose more than $7 million in Medicare payments as a penalty for having rates of infections and patient injuries that run higher than most hospitals nationwide.
St. Vincent Health will close its long-term acute hospital in Lafayette in the next two months, leaving as many as 83 workers without jobs. The Indianapolis-based hospital system stopped accepting new patients last week at Seton Specialty Hospital if they require stays of 25 days or longer. The facility will close after all current patients end their stays. St. Vincent officials said they would have had to find a new home for Seton because the campus where it leased space— Franciscan St. Elizabeth Health’s Central campus—moved its operations to the Franciscan St. Elizabeth Health’s East campus, also in Lafayette, last month. St. Vincent will continue to operate its other Seton Specialty Hospital in Indianapolis. The Seton Specialty Hospital in Indianapolis has been running at higher occupancy and posting larger profits than its counterpart in Lafayette, according to St. Vincent’s annual filings with the Indiana State Department of Health.
One of three experimental drugs in Eli Lilly and Co.’s push into autoimmune medicines has flamed out. Indianapolis-based Lilly said it would end development of its lupus drug after it failed in overall results generated by two Phase 3 trials in humans. Lilly gave the drug in two doses to patients and in one of the trials, the higher dose showed a statistically significant improvement in patients compared with those taking a placebo. But the lower dose did not. And in a second clinical trial, both doses failed to show a significant benefit versus placebo. Lilly will take an accounting charge in the third quarter of as much as $75 million before taxes. In August, Lilly announced that an autoimmune drug to treat psoriasis had shown marked improvement over an existing therapy, and that Lilly would submit it to regulators for approval. Lilly is also studying a third autoimmune drug to treat rheumatoid arthritis. Results from that drug are expected late this year or early next year.
Community Health Network received a $3.7 million grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to fund its early intervention program to prevent suicides among Hoosiers ages 10 to 24. Over the next five years, Community will use the federal money to work with 600 primary care physicians, 13 hospitals and 11 emergency departments around the state, offering them crisis services, psychiatry services provided over the Internet, and intensive care coordination. Those providers and facilities, some of which are part of Community’s health system, will serve 5,000 Hoosiers per year. Community will also work with schools, foster care agencies, juvenile justice programs, state government agencies and others to build a statewide crisis network of people trained to identify young people at risk of attempting suicide, provide timely intervention, and quickly connect them with Community’s crisis providers.
Early results of studies show exercise, training help keep mind active later in life.
The Indiana University School of Medicine will help oversee a three-year, $30 million concussion study being funded by the Indianapolis-based NCAA and the U.S. Defense Department.
The scramble for physicians by hospitals in recent years has led to more than a dozen physicians cracking a million dollars in compensation—and three dozen receiving at least a half million dollars. Hospitals, meanwhile, are recording big losses on their physician practices.
Shutting the 2-year-old counseling center’s doors in October will affect 179 patients, most of whom are victims of domestic violence or sexual assault.
It looks like Eli Lilly and Co. has a winner. The Indianpaolis-based drugmaker’s experimental diabetes drug dulaglutide helped patients with Type 2 diabetes lose weight while suffering only manageable side effects, according to Phase 3 clinical trial data released over the weekend at the American Diabetes Association meeting in Chicago. According to Bloomberg News, dulaglutide, if approved, may be a significant competitor to Novo Nordisk A/S’ Victoza, which generated $1.64 billion in 2012. A clinical trial comparing the drugs may report results by the end of the year. “We look at the space and we feel we have an opportunity to offer a significant new product,” said Sherry Martin, senior medical director for diabetes development at Indianapolis-based Lilly. The company plans to submit the drug to U.S. regulators for approval by the end of this year. Dulaglutide is projected to sell $835 million in 2018, according to the average of six analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Martin said the drug would be the only weekly injection in the class that doesn’t require patients to prepare the dose for administration.
The California Public Employees Retirement System saved $5.5 million, or 19 percent of its affected medical claims, under a two-year pilot project with Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. that steered patients away from high-cost health care providers that don’t produce better outcomes. WellPoint executives told Bloomberg News that the cost-capping, or reference-pricing, policy employed in the pilot program is now gaining momentum among employers. The California pension program, known as Calpers, became a partner in the pilot program after a WellPoint analysis found similar hip and knee surgeries cost anywhere from $15,000 to $110,000 per patient, with no difference in patient outcomes, according to Bloomberg. So in 2011, Calpers and WellPoint’s Anthem Blue Cross unit began steering patients toward 46 hospitals that agreed to keep their costs below $30,000—known as the program's “reference price.” If workers went to another provider, then they were responsible for any costs above $30,000. About 400 members opted for the designated hospitals in 2011, a 21-percent increase over previous years. Calpers’ in-patient costs for hip and knee surgeries dropped to an average of $28,695 from $35,400, according to WellPoint. The study was conducted by HealthCore, a research unit owned by WellPoint, and released Sunday at the AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting in Baltimore.
Researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine blocked the progression of Type 1 diabetes among newly diagnosed patients using a drug originally sold to treat psoriasis. In a clinical trial involving 49 patients, those who were given the drug alefacept (sold under the brand name Amevive) kept producing the same amount of insulin over the next year, while patients receiving a placebo saw their level of insulin drop over the same period. If the results are repeated in studies involving more patients, the drug could enable Type 1 diabetics to maintain some insulin production and avoid the debilitating complications caused by the disease, said Dr. Mark R. Rigby, a professor of pediatrics at the IU medical school. Nearly 3 million people are estimated to have Type 1 diabetes in the United States. Although the disease can be managed with insulin injections, it cannot be reversed or cured. Long-term complications can include visual impairment, heart disease, stroke, problems in the extremities leading to amputation, and other problems.
An Indiana University School of Medicine researcher has received a $3.8 million three-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to study estrogen as a treatment for schizophrenia using an unreleased drug developed by Eli Lilly and Co. A team led by Dr. Alan Breier, a professor of psychiatry at the IU medical school, will use a drug discovered by Lilly scientists that mimics some of the actions of the hormone estrogen, but without many of the side effects, such as feminization in men and uterine cancer in women. Breier's study is one of nine projects to receive support from a new NIH program called Discovering New Therapeutic Uses for Existing Molecules.
A study recently published in Archives of General Psychiatry has linked the growing incidence of autism to early-life exposure to pollution.
WINNER: Community Achievement in Health Care
Half of the candidates to replace retiring dean Dr. Craig Brater are from the IU medical school and the other half are outsiders, according to a release issued Monday by the Indiana University School of Medicine.
Dr. Thomas McAllister has been named chairman of the department of psychiatry at Indiana University School of Medicine. McAllister is currently vice chairman for neuroscience in the department of psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School. McAllister received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Dartmouth.
Eskenazi Health appointed Dr. Mark Bustamante to manage primary care in Eskenazi’s community health centers throughout Indianapolis. Bustamante will serve as CEO of the newly designated Eskenazi Health Center federally qualified health center, formerly the division of primary care at Wishard Health Services. Wishard changed its name to Eskenazi Health this year.
Gary Everling has been named vice president of strategy and business development for Hendricks Regional Health in Danville. Everling holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Greenville College and an MBA from the University of Indianapolis. He has been in health care administration since 1998 and most recently served as system executive of business development for Indianapolis-based hospital system St. Vincent Health.
Fort Wayne-based Medical Informatics Engineering appointed Craig Mathison as vice president of finance. He most recently served as chief financial officer and president at Felderman Design-Build in Fort Wayne.
