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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.
