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A family cashes in on the nursing shortage: Noblesville company grows rapidly by filling void

A Noblesville family took on the U.S. nursing shortage in 1999 armed with only $30,000 and a home computer and wound up creating a multimillion-dollar business. The nursing shortage still lingers, but the family’s company, Innovative Placements Inc., takes in more than $8 million in annual revenue by filling employment gaps with traveling nurses. Twin sisters Retha Clark and Letha Engelman, and Letha’s husband, John, place more than 100 nurses in 39 states. They want to add 50 more nurses…

BEHIND THE NEWS: Conseco now seeks assets from Hilbert’s Haverstick

Attorneys for Conseco Inc. have a new target in their legal assault a g a i n s t f o r m e r C E O S t e p h e n Hilbert. It’s Haverstick Consulting Inc., the Carmelbased company Hilbert now leads. In court papers filed last week in Hamilton County, Conseco attorneys charge that Hilbert and his wife, Tomisue, transferred millions of dollars into Haverstick in recent years but did not receive stock of equal…

Seeking to sway politicians: Lobbyists savor the challenge of playing the game, which requires chess-like strategizing

When Maureen Ferguson was a lobbyist for the Indiana Petroleum Council, she went skiing for the first time, in Colorado. As her ski instructor was taking her up the mountain, he asked her what she did for a living. When she told him, he “went off” on how the oil industry was corrupt and running the government, and she recalled that she found herself fearing for her life. Now when someone asks Ferguson what she does, sometimes she tells them,…

Access at takeoff: Expert helps find accommodating design for terminal

Your spouse attempts to drop you off at the curb and unload your wheelchair as an airport cop who seems to mistake you for a terrorist barks an order to drive away immediately. Once inside, you get separated from your travel companions because you had to take an out-of-the-way wheelchair ramp. And heaven help you if the checkpoint screener is having a bad day. Gregory S. Fehribach has to imagine such scenarios-not that the life-long wheelchair user hasn’t already endured…

NOTIONS: At the dawn of 2005, we’re all in the same boat

My family and I spent Christmas week on a boat, in the ocean, with hundreds of people from Indonesia. And because they were comforting us, not vice versa, it seemed all wrong. The day after Christmas, Pam, Austin, Zach and I awoke at 3 a.m. We showered, dressed and lugged our suitcases downstairs. At 4 a.m., the limousine pulled up in our snowy driveway. The chauffeur loaded our luggage into the Cadillac’s trunk, helped us aboard and drove through icy…

Herron site might be used for new school: Charter campus proposed for soon-to-be vacated spot

Joanna Taft isn’t content helping to develop emerging artists. She also wants to help develop art patrons-and the historic neighborhood around what will soon be the former home of IUPUI’s Herron School of Art at Pennsylvania and 16th streets. So Taft, executive director at the nearby Harrison Center for the Arts, is working on plans for a charter high school to occupy a portion of the space IUPUI will vacate when it moves the art school to the campus proper…

Checking credit status set to get easier: New law lets consumers obtain 3 free reports each year, implements changes to help fight identification theft

Aging medical bills that fell off the radar screen, unused bank accounts that were never closed and continue to rack up monthly fees, or an erroneous charge placed on the report by mistake all can wreak havoc on consumers’ plans. Beginning in March, however, a law signed by President Bush in December 2003 will make it easier for Indiana residents to keep closer tabs on those credit reports and head off troubles at the pass. The Fair and Accurate Credit…

Trucking firm to roll out own software product: Hoosier Tradewinds targets driver shortage

Carmel trucking line Hoosier Tradewinds Inc. plans to deliver an unusual product-its own software company. Tradewinds Technologies will offer an intranet portal product trucking firms can use to track everything from delivery status to driver revenue. The company will break ground by the end of next month on an 8,000-squarefoot facility at U.S. 31 and 236th Street. It also will house new corporate offices for Hoosier Tradewinds. The TIRES portal, short for Tradewinds Information Resource, will be marketed partly as…

GERALD BEPKO Commentary: State should help insurance industry grow

GERALD BEPKO Commentary State should help insurance industry grow Everyone seems to agree that state governments must facilitate job growth and wealth creation. As pioneers in publicprivate partnerships, Indiana’s leaders have envisioned a future for Indiana that includes many partnership economi c – d eve l o p m e n t strategies. One reflection of this vision is the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership-led focus on key sectors, such as advanced manufacturing, logistics and life sciences. The priority associated with…

Hospital grades hit Web: State says data is helpful, but should be used carefully by health care consumers

Everything from the number of services performed to the number of complaints received is covered by the new hospital consumer reports section on the department’s Web site. Health Department officials say they’ve wanted to post this information for some time to give patients a way to make more informed choices about where to seek treatment. However, the people who post the numbers and others in health care caution that the data offers only a slice of insight. Starting late last…

INVESTING: Keeping an eye out for the next great chief executive

A client’s question recently struck me as a great thing to think about in the new year. The client wondered who would be the next Warren Buffett or Sandy Weill. The stock market exists to provide capital for industry, and in turn industry has to provide an acceptable rate of return on that capital. On a historical basis, we can easily measure the rate of return for any public company and anyone running a public company. Hence the question of…

Lilly maintains focus on its pharmaceuticals: Drugmaker has no plans to replicate J&J’s diversity

Johnson & Johnson loves to profit from a balanced product line, and it has competitor Eli Lilly and Co. to thank-in a roundabout way-for its latest bit of leverage. New Jersey-based J&J plans to expand its medical device business by buying Guidant Corp., which Lilly created and then spun off in the early 1990s. J&J leaders think the proposed, $25.4 billion deal will create better balance among a line of businesses that has been led by pharmaceuticals, which made up…

She makes live TV readable for the hearing impaired: Former court reporter transferred her skills to broadcast captioning, which she does from her home studio

If you’ve ever hit the mute button on your TV, you’ve probably seen the closed-captioning text at the bottom of the screen that’s provided primarily for the hearing impaired. For live TV shows, someone’s fingers have to fly on a stenotype machine to produce those captions. The National Court Reporters Association estimates there are only about 500 people in the country who can do that, and Susie Wollenweber is one of them. Working from her Indianapolis basement, Wollenweber provides broadcast…

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS: Consumer confidence is tricky economic indicator

We’ve see it on television almost every day, it seems. Within seconds of a dramatic event-winning a race, scoring a touchdown, or finding a lost child-the central figure is asked by an eager reporter, “How do you feel?” As an economist, I am generally squirming in my chair at this point. Not because economists have no feelings-we actually do even if we tend to express them using graphs and equations. Rather, it is because we believe the best way to…

Dems hope for some strategic input: Indiana Economic Development Council completes state plan, but it could get lost in switch

For months, Jackie Nytes has been developing a strategy for statewide economic development. It comes off the presses this week. But the inauguration of Mitch Daniels leaves her wondering whether anyone will ever read it-let alone act on its recommendations. Nytes, a Democratic member of the City-County Council, serves as president of the Indiana Economic Development Council Inc. Daniels, the Republican governor-elect, is folding all state economic development efforts into the Indiana Economic Development Corp. The corporation, a public-private partnership,…

Regulators probe Galyan’s trades: Investigation reason for leave of absence for McDonald stockbroker Dave Knall

Securities regulators are investigating allegations of insider trading in Galyan’s Trading Co. stock before the company’s sale to Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. last summer, IBJ has learned. Sources said those under scrutiny include star Indianapolis stockbroker Dave Knall and his son James, who worked with his father at a McDonald Investments office on 96th Street in Indianapolis. Dave Knall, 60, one of the nation’s top-producing stockbrokers, has been on a voluntarily leave of absence from McDonald since Dec. 3. The…

Tax-law changes push investment: Congress raises contribution limits to savings plans, allowing workers to stash away more for retirement

While any serious debate over whether to privatize Social Security could turn messy, the message from federal lawmakers regarding your personal retirement plans is crystal clear. The advice coming from Washington, financial planners say, is to stash away as much as you can, because it may get tougher to make it on a monthly government allowance with an uncertain future. Evident again in this year’s changes to the tax law, which has become friendlier since a 2001 makeover, are across-theboard…

BULLS & BEARS: Looking long-term is key to tasting market’s fruits

If you follow the stock market and are like most people, you can’t help but be sucked in to the short-term mentality vortex. The financial channels and newspapers all focus on short-term, smallpicture events. You can’t fault them, though, since it’s their job. The big mistake many folks make is using too much of the short-term, smallpicture information to make long-term, big-picture decisions. Your mom warned you against making “snap decisions” or “rushing to judgment.” Today, largely due to the…

CHRIS KATTERJOHN Commentary: Avoid Florida-like snags on stadium

NAPLES, Fla.-As I entered the state of Florida yesterday, I remembered that just about a year ago I was at a meeting in South Miami where Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was holding court on economic development efforts. His pride and joy was a deal to bring the Scripps Research Institute to Palm Beach County on the state’s east coast. I wrote a column about it in our Feb. 9, 2004, issue. Bush and his team had lured the highly regarded…

RETURN ON TECHNOLOGY: Talking over the Internet may be your answer

Some technologies are born inefficient, some achieve inefficiency, and some have inefficiency thrust upon them. Your computer, for example, is horribly inefficient, in an engineering sense. It sits and does nothing most of the day. It wasn’t born inefficient. It can be hooked to other computers to maximize its downtime, if you like. But your telephone is another matter. It’s intrinsically inefficient, and not just because it isn’t in use most of the time. It’s also because when you’re on…