Indiana company quits Missouri Medicaid contract
Indianapolis-based SynCare has ended its contract to screen Missouri Medicaid recipients after numerous complaints about its job performance.
Health Care & Life Sciences
Articles
Missouri health care advocates decry Indiana contractor
Indianapolis-based SynCare LLC, hired to determine the eligibility of Missouri Medicaid patients for in-home care, has "been a complete disaster from the beginning," statewide health care advocates charge.
Lawyer: Expect more hospital-doc lawsuits
With hospitals having scooped up hundreds of physicians in the past three years—putting nearly all of them under non-compete agreements—there are bound to be legal tussles when some of those physicians decide their new matches aren’t exactly made in heaven.
Savings power of HSAs appears to wane
As consumer-directed health plans become more prevalent, their power to save money for employers is waning, according to the latest survey by Indianapolis-based United Benefit Advisors.
AIT’s Evans gave $48M to start Marian med school
Marian disclosed Evans’ 2010 donation Wednesday as it held a groundbreaking ceremony for its medical and nursing school building, which will be called the Michael A. Evans Center for Health Sciences.
Q&A
Angela Smith, an attorney for hospitals and physicians at Indianapolis-based Hall Render Killian Heath & Lyman P.C., spoke about Medicare’s value-based purchasing program, a federal initiative that will attempt to shift health care payments from the fee-for-service model to one based on health outcomes. On July 1, hospitals began being scored on their performance in 13 categories, including processes, patient outcomes and patient satisfaction surveys. How hospitals score could boost or diminish all their Medicare payments by as much as 1 percent, beginning in October 2012.
Roche Diagnostics to get indirect boon from new test
New drug for metastatic melanoma packaged with genetic test should help Roche sell more of its cobas 4800 laboratory testing systems.
Study: Hospital-doc hookups raising costs
Indianapolis doctor tell researchers that hospitals are paying more than $1 million a year to employ some cardiologists.
Lilly spent $1.9M lobbying feds in first quarter
Eli Lilly and Co. spent $1.9 million lobbying the federal government in the first quarter, focusing on the health care overhaul and overseas pricing reform, among many other issues.
WellPoint spent $1.3M on federal lobbying in 2nd quarter
WellPoint lobbied on issues tied to the overhaul's implementation and regulations for accountable care organizations, which are networks of hospitals, doctors, rehabilitation centers and other providers that coordinate a patient's care.
Arcadia Resources to delist stock amid cash crunch
Arcadia Resources Inc.’s share price dwindled to just 5 cents as of late Tuesday morning, following the company's announcement that it was delisting its stock and had suffered another quarterly loss.
Daniels says smoking ban has chance to pass next year
The governor says he wants to see the percentage of adult Hoosiers who smoke drop to 20 percent by the end of his term. A recent report put the state's smoking rate at a historic low of 21.1 percent.
Anthem not quite so dominant
Revised Insurance Department data show the Indianapolis-based carrier claims about 60 percent of the individual health insurance market in Indiana, down from a previously reported 65 percent.
IU Health fights Franciscan over family doc
IU Health Morgan Hospital sued Dr. Dianna Boyer on Aug. 3 to stop her from moving her practice to a facility Franciscan St. Francis Health is building in Martinsville.
Glick support boosts IU eye research
A $10 million research endowment at the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Eye Institute has attracted seven new researchers to the Indiana University School of Medicine’s Ophthalmology Department.
Inventor on quest to bring medical device to market
Licensed practical nurse Nic Davis invented a device to kill and prevent the introduction of microorganisms that collect at catheter ports.
Health care VC slows in 2011
Four Hoosier companies attracted more than $10.5 million, down from 10 companies that attracted $18.5 million during the first half of 2010.
Q&A
The adult smoking rate in Indiana dropped to 21.2 percent last year, a major reduction from the 27 percent rate logged five years ago. Karla Sneegas, assistant commissioner of the State Health Department’s Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Commission, discussed the progress, as well as her agency’s efforts to help employers help their workers quit smoking.
Five individual insurers leaving Indiana
Hartford-based Aetna Inc. and Philadelphia-based Cigna Corp., the nation’s third- and fifth-largest health insurers respectively, have announced their departure from Indiana’s individual health insurance market.
Zimmer playing hardball with plaintiffs’ lawyers
The Warsaw-based company has sued seven law firms this year and sent warning letters to at least three more, saying their ads and Internet postings distorted the safety record of its $1.8 billion-a-year knee business.