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J.K. Wall

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Q&A

Amy Zucker is president of Indianapolis-based Synergy Marketing Group. Her firm was recently hired by Indianapolis-based ImmuneWorks Inc. to use a new website and search engine optimization to help recruit patients for a Phase 1 trial of ImmuneWorks experimental medicine idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The Web strategy is a new wrinkle on patient recruitment—in addition to the traditional partnerships with disease specialists at academic medical centers—that Zucker hopes leads to lower costs and faster clinical trials. Phase 1 clinical trials cost nearly $16,000 per patient.

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Some Lilly-paid docs sport spotty records

Eli Lilly and Co. paid more than $102 million last year and early this year to physicians for talking up Lilly drugs to other doctors. Yet 88 of the doctors Lilly pays have been sanctioned by state medical boards.

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‘Payer mix’ playing role in hospital merger

Morgan Hospital & Medical Center is on the brink of merging with Clarian Health for a variety of reasons, but one of the biggest is one that all hospitals are facing in one way or another: a declining payer mix.

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IURC to re-examine Duke project amid ethics flap

The commission is summoning the CEO of North Carolina-based Duke Energy to justify the $2.9 billion Edwardsport plant on the same day the state ethics board filed formal charges against a former IURC attorney hired by Duke.

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IU shrink explores mental health blood tests

Dr. Alexander B. Niculescu, a psychiatrist at the IU School of Medicine, has won a five-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to hunt for the presence of certain proteins in the blood that would indicate that a patient suffers from a mood disorder, which afflicts one in five Americans.

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Lilly falls short on ‘field goal’ attempt

Eli Lilly and Co.’s “miss” on a new use for its cancer drug Alimta was a rare failure to get an existing drug approved for a new use—even though the company has struggled mightily to get entirely new drugs to market.

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Downtown praised for ‘livability’ but needs more residents

The past decade has seen roughly 5,000 more residents living downtown than in 2000, wooed by new condos and apartments within walking distance of growing retail and cultural attractions. There are now 25,000 downtown residents—but still a long way from the 40,000 city leaders want by the end of the next decade.

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Health care reform boosts business for consultants

John Gause has grown the size of his benefits brokerage and consulting firm by more than half this year for one big reason: health care reform. He needs more hands on deck because his clients–employers–are facing a raft of new regulations with which they must comply.

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Consultants: Pharma industry facing huge changes

Heitzman_WatchVideoTo date, most analysts say health reform turned out pretty well for the pharmaceutical industry. But a detailed analysis by Deloitte Consulting says the indirect effects of reform will deliver a gut punch to the industry that will lead to full-scale transformation akin to what the telecommunications world has seen over the past three decades.

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Q&A

Dale Hockel is vice president of clinical engineering services at TriMedX, which helps hospitals and health care facilities keep their medical equipment running even as it ages. TriMedX grew its number of clients in 2009 by 36 percent to a total of 739 health care facilities.

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Insurers cautious on accountable care

Health insurers, including locally based WellPoint Inc. and Advantage Health Solutions, have been looking to work with health care providers to form accountable-care organizations. But they also worry that the accountable-care concept will become nothing more than a negotiating tactic by hospitals and doctors.

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