Indianapolis-area experts see bright spots amid ongoing real estate weakness
Health care shows signs of life, and multi-family buildings continue to hold their own, experts said during a recent IBJ Power Breakfast.
Health Care & Insurance
Articles
Principal Financial shift to result in local layoffs
Financial giant Principal Financial Group Inc. is exiting the health insurance business, a move that will cost 60 Indianapolis workers their jobs.
FDA demands more tests on new Lilly diabetes drug
Eli Lilly and Co. will have to wait at least 18 months and conduct more studies before it wins market approval of a once-weekly version of diabetes drug Byetta, a potential billion-dollar drug.
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.
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.
‘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.
Flood-damaged Columbus hospital reassessing expansion
Columbus Regional Hospital officials say a decline in its number of inpatients and an increase in outpatients have them considering whether to proceed with a planned $108 million expansion project.
Lilly to close drug discovery center in Singapore
Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. will close its drug discovery center in Singapore, three years into a five-year, $150 million plan to expand it.
City pitching in $38M for $192M Clarian project
The city is kicking in up to $38 million for infrastructure upgrades to support a massive expansion of the Clarian Health campus at 16th Street and Capitol Avenue.
Roche acquires assets from Virginia IT company
Terms of the deal, announced on Wednesday, call for Roche to acquire all the assets associated with Medical Automation Systems Inc.’s point-of-care information technology connectivity system.
WellPoint, Aetna led U.S. insurers in coverage denial
Until all consumers are required to buy health insurance, coverage restrictions are needed to keep people from gaming the system, insurers say.
Biomet sales rise, but slower than expected
Biomet’s quarterly results are considered an indicator on the state of the orthopedic device industry because it reports results before most of its competitors.
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.
WellPoint, other insurers’ stock buybacks concern investors
Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. and competing U.S. health insurers approved $10 billion in stock repurchases in the past year, a concern to investors who say buybacks failed to increase share prices and who want more spent on dividends.
Developer of Binford Medical Complex files for Chapter 11
The developer of an unfinished medical office complex on Binford Boulevard has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in hopes it can retain control of the property and resume construction later this year.
Lilly’s Erbitux shows mixed results in cancer studies
In combination with chemotherapy, the drug failed to help colon-cancer patients in a European trial but did delay the spread of breast cancer in some patients with a certain type of aggressive tumor.
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.
OneAmerica dodged crisis, now reaps rewards
The Indianapolis-based life insurer's investment portfolio held up through the recession, and the company reported record revenue and profit in 2009.
Coordinating Lilly ‘Day of Service’ a major undertaking
Getting 8,500 volunteers to where they're supposed to be along Interstate 70 relies on a system of color-coded passes. By 6 p.m. Thursday, they'll have planted 1,600 trees and 72,000 shrubs and perennials (with photo gallery).
Lucas Oil owners to buy former Hilbert estate
Lucas Oil Products Inc. owners Forrest and Charlotte Lucas confirmed they were buying the property for $3 million at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. It will be used for “business activities and community functions.”