The revenue-hungry Indianapolis Airport Authority is reviewing its entire parking operation, including opening up its valet parking contract in search of new services that would appeal to business travelers and in turn boost the airport’s bottom line.
The five-year trend of physician practices marrying up with hospitals has made it harder and harder for independent physician practices to spend time in more than one hospital system.
Potential First Friday highlights, a strong sister act, and a different look at the Civil War all make this week’s lineup.
Everyone knows you are not supposed to discuss taboo subjects such as religion and politics in the workplace.
Arguably one of the most passionate and polarizing debates in the General Assembly this session is the allocation of the transportation budget. Gov. Mike Pence and many legislators agree that money should be spent on repairing deteriorating roads and constructing new highways.
WINNER: Community Achievement in Health Care
Paul Halverson has been appointed founding dean of the new Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI. Halverson, 54, has served as director and state health officer for the Arkansas Department of Health since 2005. Prior to his work in Arkansas, Halverson held several positions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Halverson earned a bachelor’s degree in communication and a master’s degree in health services administration from Arizona State University. He also earned a doctorate in public health from the University of North Carolina.
Jay Brehm has been appointed senior vice president of strategic planning and business development for Franciscan Alliance, a Mishawaka-based hospital system. Brehm currently is the chief financial officer at Franciscan St. Francis Health, which operates Franciscan’s three Indianapolis-area hospitals. Brehm holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting and an MBA from Ball State University.
Dr. Thomas Wisler has joined Franciscan Physician Network McFarland Gynecologic Specialists on the south side. Wisler received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida and a medical degree from Creighton University School of Medicine.
Titus Schleyer has been named to lead the Center for Biomedical Informatics at Indianapolis-based Regenstrief Institute. Schleyer is an associate professor of dental public health at the University of Pittsburgh and founding director of the Center for Dental Informatics in the School of Dental Medicine. Schleyer earned doctorates in dental medicine and molecular biology at the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany. He subsequently received a second dental degree and an MBA in health administration from Temple University in Philadelphia.
Indianapolis is one of 17 cities in which the YMCA is rolling out a demonstration project to prevent the spread of Type 2 diabetes among Medicare recipients. The program, developed by YMCA of Central Indiana and researchers at Indiana University, offers a yearlong course in exercise, dieting and individual counseling. The program’s success at preventing diabetes for people at risk has drawn financial support from such health insurers as Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare, which piloted a 16-week version in Indianapolis three years ago. According to The Wall Street Journal, UnitedHealthcare spends $20,000 on average per year to treat a patient with advanced diabetes, but just $3,700 on average to treat a patient with prediabetes. So the insurer can save money even after paying the YMCA up to $500 per participant to help keep patients from developing full-blown diabetes.
The city of Carmel has finalized a five-year agreement with Indiana University Health to operate an employee health center, which is scheduled to open in May. The health center will be built inside the IU Health Sports Performance Center at 1402 Chase Court off Carmel Drive. It will provide primary health service free of charge to all individuals on the city of Carmel’s health plan including employees, dependents and retirees. A physician, a nurse manager and medical assistant will staff the center, which will be open 25 hours per week.
The Lung Care Group, a six-physician group of pulmonology and sleep specialists, has joined St. Vincent Medical Group, the physician arm of Indianapolis-based hospital system St. Vincent Health. The Lung Care Group, located at 8330 Naab Road, included Dr. Jerome Barnes, Dr. William Byron Jr., Dr. Thomas Holian, Dr. Brandon Perkins, Dr. Mitchell Pfeiffer and Dr. Praveen Vohra.
WellPoint Inc. will raise its quarterly dividend 30 percent. The Indianapolis-based health insurer says it will pay 37.5 cents per share in the first quarter, up from 28.7 cents in the fourth quarter. WellPoint expects to return about $2 billion to shareholders this year through the dividend and share buybacks. The new dividend is payable March 25 to shareholders of record at the close of business March 8.
The Indianapolis native and IU graduate has been with IBJ since 2006. He currently covers the real estate beat, writes the Property Lines real estate blog and appears on business news updates for Fox59, IBJ's newsgathering partner.
ExactTarget Inc. could get a 10-year tax break on an unspecified investment in new equipment if the City-County Council agrees to designate several parcels tied to the Indianapolis-based company as a "high technology district."
The cost of health care for an additional 400,000 low income residents is something nobody in the Indiana Statehouse seems to be able to agree upon this year, even as the crucial decision about whether to expand Medicaid bears down on lawmakers midway through their annual session.
Decisions by other Republican governors to support Medicaid expansion is increasing pressure on Indiana’s governor to do the same.
A Senate committee is leaving a contentious battle over a proposed $3 billion coal-gasification plant in the Indiana Supreme Court’s hands for now.
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.
Former Amerigroup Corp. CEO Jim Carlson will leave WellPoint Inc., the company told Bloomberg News—three days after he lost a bid for the top job at the Indianapolis-based health insurer. Carlson will leave WellPoint on Feb. 28, according to a statement e-mailed by company spokeswoman Kristin Binns. He had joined the nation's second-largest health insurer in December, after WellPoint closed its $4.9 billion acquisition of Amerigroup. WellPoint named Joe Swedish, CEO of the not-for-profit hospital system Trinity Health Corp., to be its next leader, ending a six-month search. Carlson, 60, was among the other candidates under consideration. “After helping close the Amerigroup transaction and assisting over the past six weeks with the integration of the two companies, Jim Carlson will be leaving WellPoint effective Feb. 28,” WellPoint said in the statement. While Carlson had signed a contract to remain with WellPoint for two years, the pact allowed the two sides to part under “changed circumstances,” said Carl McDonald, a Citigroup analyst, in a Feb. 13 note to clients. The WellPoint statement didn’t mention Carlson’s contract. Binns declined to comment when asked how Carlson’s contract would be handled. WellPoint said last month that Richard Zoretic, Amerigroup’s former chief operating officer, would run its Medicaid business.
In a combative Feb. 13 letter to the Obama administration, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence asked the federal government to approve a three-year extension of the Healthy Indiana Plan health savings accounts in lieu of an expansion of a federal Medicaid system. "Medicaid is broken. It has a well-documented history of substantial waste, fraud and abuse. It has failed to keep pace with private market innovations that have created efficiencies, controlled costs and improved quality," he wrote to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. According to the Associated Press, the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration requested a waiver from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, seeking to enroll residents who earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line in the HIP program — a move that would effectively cover roughly 400,000 residents through health savings accounts instead of traditional Medicaid. The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act had called for all states to expand eligibility to the traditional Medicaid program for all residents making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty limit. House Minority Leader Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City, said Pence's move puts thousands of jobs at risks by playing politics with the expansion. It's unclear whether the federal agency in charge of Medicaid will sign off on a longer extension and expansion of the Indiana program. The agency approved a one-year extension last month but ruled out minimum payments. Former Gov. Mitch Daniels sought a three-year extension of the program in 2011, but was rejected.
Bioanalytical Systems Inc. swung to a profit in the quarter ended Dec. 31, the West Lafayatte-based company announced Feb. 14. The company, which conducts preclinical testing for pharmaceutical companies, earned $139,000 during the quarter, or 2 cents per share, compared with a loss in the same quarter a year ago of $1.5 million, or 21 cents per share. But revenue in the quarter fell 23 percent, compared with a year ago, to $5.8 million. Jacqueline Lemke, who was recently named CEO after serving in the role on an interim basis, said in a prepared statement: "With the notable exception of revenue, all of our operating metrics moved decisively in the right direction in the first quarter compared to the prior year. We believe these improvements are sustainable.”
A federal audit recommended that the Indiana Medicaid program refund more than $5.8 million because it failed to ensure that Logansport State Hospital had complied with special conditions for psychiatric hospitals. The audit, released Friday by the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said the hospital failed to demonstrate it met staffing and medical-record requirements from the start of 2008 through the end of 2010. So the inspector general thinks the state of Indiana should refund all federal funds used to pay that hospital during that time period—about $5.84 million—as well as any federal funds paid after 2010 if the hospital continued to be out of compliance. It's unclear whether Indiana will need to refund all the recommended amounts or when that would happen. Audits usually begin a period of negotiations between the two sides. The agency that administers the Indiana Medicaid program, the Family and Social Services Administration, issued a brief statement Friday saying the agency disagrees with the audit findings and plans to work with the federal government to reach "a reasonable resolution."
Dutch diagnostics maker Qiagen NV will work with Eli Lilly and Co. to develop companion tests that could identify patients who could be helped by Lilly's drugs. According to the Associated Press, the companies did not disclose terms of the new collaboration, but described it as a "broad" partnership that will cover "all therapeutic areas." In September 2011, Qiagen started working with Indianapolis-based Lilly on a test designed to identify patients who might be helped by an experimental blood cancer drug. In July 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a genetic test Qiagen developed that is designed to help doctors more quickly determine which late-stage colon cancer patients will respond to the drug Erbitux and which won't benefit from the treatment. Erbitux is marketed by Lilly and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. In January, Lilly partnered with a unit of Agilent Technologies Inc. to develop a test that can identify cancer patients who could benefit from an experimental cancer drug Lilly is developing.
The health care systems would not provide details, but said the announcement would place "Indianapolis in the best position for health care reform."
Small not-for-profits’ strategy of recruiting big-business executives for top posts has had mixed results since coming into vogue in the 1990s. For some of the executives, the transitions is a culture shock.
