It would be “absurd” and a “travesty” for Indiana not to expand its Medicaid program, according to two local hospital officials. And yet other health care leaders do not expect expanded Medicaid coverage to provide nearly as much help to uninsured Hoosiers as hoped.
WellPoint Inc. is likely to name an outsider as its next CEO, according to interviews with former executives and directors of the Indianapolis-based health insurance company. The person mentioned most often as a likely successor to ousted CEO Angela Braly is David Snow, who led New Jersey-based pharmacy benefit manager Medco Health Solutions Inc. until its $29 billion sale this year to St. Louis-based Express Scripts. Internal WellPoint candidates Wayne DeVeydt and Ken Goulet also will receive a thorough look from the board, but former company brass say they have not been fully readied to be CEO because the WellPoint board did not expect to have to replace Braly, 51, so soon.
Amerigroup Corp., the Medicaid managed care company being acquired by WellPoint, will sell its Virginia business to Virginia-based hospital system Inova to placate federal antitrust regulators, according to Reuters. The U.S. Department of Justice had requested additional information from both WellPoint and Amerigroup on their Virginia businesses, according to an announcement from Amerigroup on Friday. The sale to Inova is not expected to have an impact on WellPoint's $4.9 billion acquisition of Amerigroup. Both deals are expected to close in the fourth quarter.
Indianapolis-based Dow AgroSciences LLC said Friday that it has prevailed in a patent-infringement lawsuit involving one of the company’s key weed-control products. The suit, filed in December 2010 by South Africa-based Bayer CropScience SA, charged that Dow AgroSciences’ herbicide-tolerance technology infringed one of its patents. In the Sept. 27 ruling, a federal judge sided with Dow AgroSciences in its motion to have the case dismissed, determining that Dow’s Enlist weed-control technology did not infringe on the patent. Dow AgroSciences, a subsidiary of Midland, Mich.-based Dow Chemical Co., predicts Enlist could earn as much as $1 billion over its life cycle.
One of Indiana University's two new schools of public health has a new name. The school on the Indianapolis campus on Thursday was formally named the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health. The Fairbanks Foundation last year gave IU $20 million to help establish the school, which evolved from the Department of Public Health in the IU School of Medicine. Another public health school is being established at IU's Bloomington campus. The Bloomington school will focus on rural communities, and the Indianapolis school will focus more on urban health and its connections to the medical school. IU spokeswoman Diane Brown says the Indianapolis school will accept its first new students next spring. Some already are working toward degrees that will be offered by the new school.
The National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research has designated the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Rehabilitation Hospital of Indiana as one of 16 sites in its Traumatic Brain Injury Model System. The designation comes with a five-year, $2.1 million grant to the medical school and the rehab hospital, which is a joint venture of the IU Health and St. Vincent Health hospital systems. Health care providers will use the federal grant money to study the effectiveness of the drugs Buspar and Vanspar in treating irritability and aggression that occur in some traumatic brain injury patients. Researchers at IU and the rehab hospital also hope to develop standard measures to assess the impact of aggression and irritability.
The Evansville-based utility estimates all residential gas customers would see their gas bills increase an average of $3.90 per month for eight years—for a total cost of $375 per consumer.
With health insurance premiums continuing to outstrip inflation, some health insurers and hospital systems are considering bringing back an old strategy: limiting patient access to a “narrow” network of doctors and hospitals.
Regenstrief study finds many visit two different facilities within year’s time.
The Indiana Rail Road Co. has reactivated a closed rail yard through a partnership with a Canadian logistics company, which serves about a dozen of INRD’s customers at the yard.
Richard Lugar is leaving the Senate, yet the Republican who lost the May primary election to Richard Mourdock still intends to continue some of the work that defined his life as a lawmaker. Lugar spelled out his plans for the first time in a recent speech to the Contemporary Club of Indianapolis at a dinner staged to honor his more than four decades of service as school board member, mayor and six-term U.S. senator.
The 2013 IndyCar Series schedule could include a date at Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pa., a traditional NASCAR stronghold that hasn’t hosted an open-wheel race in 23 years.
Dr. Kristina Whitesell, a pediatrician, has established a practice with Franciscan Physician Network Heartland Crossing Pediatrics in Camby. Whitesell earned her medical degree at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and also earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota.
Indianapolis law firm Hall, Render, Killian, Heath & Lyman has hired attorney Janelle McIntyre as part of its Indianapolis litigation group. McIntyre completed her undergraduate studies at Indiana University and earned her law degree at IU McKinney School of Law.
After nearly 30 years as an attorney at Indianapolis law firm Riley, Bennett & Egloff, Mary Reeder has accepted a position as in-house general counsel at Reid Hospital & Health Care Services in Richmond.
Victor Vinci has joined Bloomington-based Cook Pharmica as chief scientific officer. Prior to joining Cook, Vinci worked many years at Eli Lilly and Co. in Indianapolis. He also spent six years at Merck & Co. Inc. He holds a master’s degree and a doctorate in microbiology from The Ohio State University. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and microbiology from Bowling Green State University.
Perry Griffith, the scion of the Griffith family’s Denison Parking empire, is handing the CEO reins to the executive who helped him expand the Indianapolis company to 10 other states in as many years.
At the conclusion of this season, five-year contracts for many of Lucas Oil Stadium’s 7,100 club seats expire. Other club seats on shorter contracts also expire, pushing the total up for renewal to about two-thirds of club seat capacity.
Using banks as a sales channel also boosts business in what has been a languishing product segment.
This summer, Ivy Tech Community College rolled out a nearly $1 million marketing campaign that stressed the school’s affordability versus other higher education options. The message appears to have hit home. What looked like an impending 15-percent reduction in fall enrollment ended up at just under 5 percent.
Any successful revitalization of the Market Square Arena site demands restoring the former City Hall as the public’s house. City Hall’s decaying grandeur casts a long shadow over the neighboring parking lots created by the implosion of MSA 11 years ago and is probably overwhelming the facile designs associated with redevelopment proposals.
Recently, all eyes have been glued to developments in the presidential race and to Indiana’s campaigns for governor and U.S. senator. We’ve paid less attention to the folks running for seats in the Indiana House and Senate.
Luxury outlet malls—where upscale retailers such as Coach Inc. and Michael Kors Holdings Ltd. hawk discount goods—are now the main source of expansion for the Indianapolis-based real estate investment trust, the country’s largest.
A panel conversation with Katie Culp, senior managing director, principal, Cassidy Turley; Mike Higbee, president, DC Development Group; Christie B. Kelley, chief financial officer, executive vice president, Duke Realty Philip; G. Kenney, president, F.A. Wilhelm Construction Co.; Thomas K. McGowan, president and chief operating officer, Kite Realty Group; and Tadd M. Miller, CEO, Milhaus Development LLC.
