Company news

Major Hospital is seeking public input on its plans to build a $100 million hospital on the northern edge of Shelbyville, according to The Shelbyville News. The plans, which Major executives have been mulling since 2003, call for a 240,000-square-foot facility that would connect to Major’s Benesse Oncology Center in the Intelliplex business park. Major has also opened orthopedic, cardiology and OBGYN centers in the park. Major’s inpatient hospital in the center of Shelbyville has 72 beds, but the vast majority of the care Major provides is on an outpatient basis. Major has already begun to solicit bids from construction firms and bond rating agencies. CEO Jack Horner said the Major Hopsital board could make a decision on building a new hospital by October.

St. Vincent Heart Center wants to build a helipad about a half-mile from the specialty hospital. Currently, helicopter ambulances transporting cardiovascular patients must land at a borrowed facility a couple of miles north, on the opposite side of heavily traveled U.S. 31—adding as much as 20 minutes to the trip. Carmel’s Board of Zoning Appeals denied a similar request back in 2008, saying the proposed location was too close to nearby neighborhoods. But the newly proposed location at 10202 N. Meridian St. is less residential. The now-vacant land was once the home of Pilgrim Lutheran Church, which moved to 106th Street in 2012 to make way for the U.S. 31/I-465 interchange improvements now under construction. The zoning board is scheduled to consider the request at its Aug. 25 meeting.

Warsaw-based Symmetry Medical Inc. plans to sell off the orthopedics components subsidiary that generates nearly 80 percent of its revenue, according to Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly. Massachusetts-based Tecomet, which is part of Genstar Capital, has agreed to pay $450 million for the OEM Solutions subsidiary. As part of the sale, Symmetry Medical will transfer ownership of its surgical instrument business, Symmetry Surgical, to the company’s shareholders and turn Symmetry Surgical into a newly traded public company. Shareholders would get one share of the new company for every four shares of Symmetry Medical stock. OEM Solutions generated nearly $81 million in revenue in the second quarter. Symmetry Surgical, meanwhile, saw $20.4 million in second-quarter revenue, down 8.7 percent from a year earlier.

WellPoint Inc.’s California subsidiary has partnered with the not-for-profit health plan Blue Shield of California to pay $80 million to launch a medical data sharing portal, according to the Associated Press. The California Integrated Data Exchange, known as Cal INDEX, is designed to share patients’ medical claims records electronically among doctors and hospitals, even for emergency room patients. Mark Morgan, president of WellPoint’s Anthem Blue Cross plan in California, said the health plans will mimic successful models such as the New York e-Health Collaborative and Indiana Health Information Exchange. The health plans’ information from patients' billing claims could supplement treatment records in the 30 health information exchanges health care providers have already created in California.