The Colts recently contracted with California-based DeskSite to launch an app to feed fan laptops, tablets, desktop computers and televisions with on-demand Colts-centric video content.
Companies around Indianapolis—especially small ones without their own IT teams—are still trying to determine how or even if they were affected by the confounding Internet security gap.
Project Pie plans to construct a stand-alone building near Meijer on the northeast side. Meanwhile, Big Red Liquors enters the downtown market by purchasing the Kahn’s store on North Pennsylvania Street.
These are the first 25 locations the city of Indianapolis, Indianapolis Power & Light and Bollore Group plan to install electric-vehicle charging stations, kiosks and parking for a new car-sharing service, BlueIndy.
Indiana officials have approved a pact with a private company that will finance and build the new section of Interstate 69 between Bloomington and Martinsville.
Dr. Bert Howard O'Neil has been named Joseph W. and Jackie J. Cusick Professor of Oncology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He also directs the gastrointestinal cancer research program at the IU Simon Cancer Center. O'Neil was most recently a professor and director of the gastrointestinal malignancies research program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. O'Neil earned his medical degree from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Indianapolis-based AIT Laboratories has named Dr. Kun Ma vice president of science and technology. He most recently served as director of venture analysis at Indianapolis-based CHV Capital Inc. and CEO of University of Health Management China Inc. Before that, Ma worked as a research associate at the National Laboratory of Molecular Virology and Genetic Engineering, and as a business development manager at Indiana University Research and Technology Corp. Ma received a medical degree from Beijing University Health Science Center, a doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biology from the Indiana University School of Medicine, and an MBA in marketing and strategy from the Washington University Olin School of Business.
Assembly Pharmaceuticals, a company with roots in Bloomington and San Francisco, has attracted an undisclosed amount of investment from New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson Development Corp., Indianapolis-based Twilight Ventures, Zionsville-based Luson Bioventures, BioCrossroads Indiana Seed Fund II and private investors. Assembly is developing drugs that could cure chronic hepatitis B virus, or HBV, infection. Chronic HBV affects an estimated 350 million people worldwide, causing cirrhosis and liver failure and in some cases liver cancer. More than 600,000 deaths each year are attributable to HBV, which can be suppressed with lifelong therapy but which has no known cure. Assembly was formed in 2012 by Indiana University professor Adam Zlotnick and Dr. Uri Lopatin, who led HBV programs at Gilead Sciences and Roche Pharmaceuticals. Assembly has licensed intellectual property from the IU Research and Technology Corp. that was discovered in Zlotnick’s laboratory. Other co-founders of the company include IU chemistry professor Richard DiMarchi; Derek Small, president of Luson Bioventures; and William Turner, a former medicinal chemist at Lilly Research Laboratories.
Carmel-based nursing home developer Mainstreet Property Group LLC promised investors returns of 14 percent to 18 percent for investments in nursing homes it is now building around Indiana, according to a private document obtained by the Associated Press. Under its business model, Mainstreet arranges financing for its facilities, then leases the completed buildings to a private operator. The buildings are then sold to HealthLease Properties Inc., a real estate investment trust controlled by Zeke Turner, who is also CEO of Mainstreet. According to the document, Mainstreet was looking to raise $60 million to build 12 new nursing homes at a cost of $199 million combined. In the case of three nursing homes it planned, Mainstreet expected to sell each for roughly $20 million, collecting between $3.3 million and $5.3 million on each sale, which would represent profits of 16.5 percent to 26.5 percent. The document does not include expected sale prices for the other nine facilities. Some previous facilities appeared to have generated even larger profits. In the case of Wellbrooke of Westfield, a new health care facility Mainstreet completed last year, investors put in $750,000 and made a $4.5 million profit, according to the Associated Press. For eight nursing home sales to HealthLease detailed in the Mainstreet document, Mainstreet investors made $34 million on an investment of $14 million, for a $20 million profit.
Indiana University's trustees have selected a downtown Evansville site for a nearly $70 million health education and research center planned by IU's medical school and three other schools. The board of trustees approved the location Friday following a recommendation by IU President Michael McRobbie. The University of Evansville, the University of Southern Indiana and Ivy Tech Community College also plan to offer programs at the center that could draw some 2,000 health care students.
Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. has donated nearly $12.8 million to help defeat a ballot initiative that would give California regulators power to reject increases in health policy premiums, according to Bloomberg News, citing data provided by the California-based research organization MapLight. Premiums for family medical coverage in California have increased 185 percent since 2002, with average monthly premiums for single coverage at $572 in 2013, compared with $490 nationally, according to a report released in January by California HealthCare Foundation, an Oakland-based not-for-profit. The ballot initiative would require insurers to disclose publicly and justify proposed rate changes that affect individual and small employer customers. It would also give the state insurance commissioner authority to reject increases. About 35 states, including Indiana, have authority to approve or deny rate changes, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
Eli Lilly and Co. saw little effect on its stock price after a jury in a federal court in Louisiana ordered Lilly to pay $3 billion in damages to patients who took the diabetes medicine Actos. That decision had no practical impact on Lilly because the maker of Actos, Japan-based Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., had agreed to indemnify Lilly against any legal damages. Lilly sold Actos for Takeda in the United States from 1999 until 2006. The jury ordered Actos to pay $6 billion in damages after finding that the drug companies hid the cancer risks of Actos. Takeda and Lilly said they would appeal the judgment. Even without a successful appeal, legal experts told Bloomberg News the $9 billion in damages is likely to be reduced because it is out of proportion to the documented damages in the case.
Ohio-based ViaQuest Inc. has acquired the Indiana operations of TriStar Home Health and Hospice, a division of Louisville-based Trilogy Health Services. The acquisition includes seven home health care branches in Evansville, Fowler, Huntingburg, Lafayette and Muncie, and two in Terre Haute. The locations operate under one of three brand names: Vibrant Home Health Care, Care One Homecare Services and Serenity Hospice. The locations employ a total of 180 people. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The Fishers-based company lost the Comfort Suites City Centre near Lucas Oil Stadium in a bankruptcy reorganization filed by one of its affiliates, which owed a creditor about $12 million.
The back-loaded enrollment process for the Obamacare exchanges gives insurers far, far less information about their new customers than usual.
Indianapolis business travelers pay a premium to shave a few hours and a lot of hassle off their trips to Silicon Valley, and they appear eager to do so. A new nonstop route between Indianapolis International Airport and San Francisco was about three-quarters sold in January and February, the two slowest months for air travel.
The mayors of Indy and Kokomo in late February gave remarkably similar state-of-the-city addresses, both focusing on the need to make their communities more desirable as places to live, not just do business.
Comparing this year’s host to next year’s reveals city’s big advantage.
From this week’s historic data dump, I learned who the top 20 recipients of Medicare payments are in Indianapolis (hint: mostly labs, ambulances and eye surgeons). But the real takeaway is that meaningful price information about doctors is still a long way away.
Health insurers such as WellPoint Inc. that plan to hike prices on their Obamacare policies more than 10 percent in 2015 will have a much harder time than usual making their case to regulators.
The sector is migrating to states that beckon with better prospects.
WellPoint Inc. is leading companies that have poured $13.4 million into defeating a ballot initiative that would give California regulators the power to reject increases in health policy premiums.
The project by Sarasota-based GoodSports Enterprises would include a 124-bed hotel and an attached 85,000-square-foot fieldhouse, built on the land once targeted by Cabela’s.
CrossFit NapTown bought the building at 922 N. Capitol Ave. and plans to expand its strength and fitness program in an area of downtown that’s enjoying a rebirth.
Lucas Hnath creates an original, riveting, thought-provoking drama with characters whose sincerity fuels fascinating conflict.
If Indiana hospitals want an expansion of insurance coverage for low-income Hoosiers, Gov. Mike Pence thinks they should contribute toward the hundreds of millions of dollars it would cost. The Pence administration has started discussions with hospital leaders to use an existing program known as the Hospital Assessment Fee to generate money to help the state cover costs it would incur under an expansion of health coverage to as many as 400,000 Hoosiers. That expansion, called for by President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, did not happen in Indiana this year, as it did in 26 other states, in large part due to Pence’s concerns about the fiscal impact on the state. The health insurance expansion would be paid for entirely by the federal government in 2015 and 2016, but then require state contributions that could rise to $393 million per year by 2020, according to estimates by the actuarial firm Milliman Inc. Other elements of Obamacare are estimated to cost state government $123 million per year by 2020. The Hospital Assessment Fee effectively taxes hospitals to provide the state government with the funds needed to raise its reimbursement rates for Medicaid patients. When the state does that, the federal government increases its 2-for-1 matching funds to support the Indiana Medicaid program. Hospitals end up getting twice as much in new revenue as they pay out in assessments. Doug Leonard, president of the Indiana Hospital Association, said hospitals are open to Pence’s approach, but are waiting until the idea is fleshed out and numbers are attached.
Indiana University Health was chosen by a Wisconsin hospital system to provide heart and aorta surgeries there after surgeons the hospital system had been using were employed by a competing provider. Wisconsin-based ProHealth Care will pay the salaries of the three IU Health surgeons who will work in ProHealth’s Waukesha Memorial Hospital, which is midway between Milwaukee and Madison. ProHealth performs more than 400 cardiothoracic surgeries each year. IU Health performs more than 1,900 cardiothoracic surgeries at its 19 hospitals in Indiana. “The goal for the two health systems is to collaborate to establish and oversee a premier surgery program in Waukesha that will incorporate the clinical protocols, care pathways and quality metrics that have been the foundation of IU Health’s nationally ranked cardiovascular program,” IU Health spokesman Gene Ford said in an email. IU Health said it would evaluate similar opportunities, but stopped short of saying it is making out-of-state partnerships a business strategy.
Eli Lilly and Co. is in a three-way race to introduce a new kind of breast cancer drug, which at least one analyst thinks could become a $6 billion-a-year blockbuster. According to Bloomberg News, Indianapolis-based Lilly, New York-based Pfizer Inc. and Switzerland-based Novartis AG all presented data on Sunday about experimental drugs that stopped growth of breast cancer tumors. Pfizer’s drug, palbociclib, stopped tumor growth for 20.2 months in advanced forms of hormone-related breast cancer, twice the time seen with an older therapy by itself. Lilly’s bemaciclib stopped tumor growth for an average of 9.1 months. Doctors told Bloomberg that the new class of drugs, called CDK inhibitors, offers the first major new therapy in a decade for patients whose breast cancer fails to respond to other treatments. Mark Schoenebaum, an ISI Group analyst in New York, predicted Pfizer’s drug could generate peak sales of $6 billion a year.
Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller filed Medicaid fraud charges April 2 against Sally Metzner, 57, owner of Anderson Dental Center, and eight of her employees. According to the Associated Press, the charges allege Metzner and her employees started a scheme in 2006 to submit false and inflated claims for payment of dental services to the Indiana Medicaid program, sometimes using forged documents, to receive more than $300,000 in ineligible Medicaid payments. The allegedly fraudulent billing continued even after state, federal and local authorities executed the first of three search warrants at the clinic, the attorney general's office said. For example, instead of billing Medicaid $30 for the routine use of the anesthesia nitrous oxide, the practice allegedly billed it as a $125 intravenous procedure known as "deep sedation.”
