Articles

Q&A

Thad Johnson became CEO of Methodist Sports Medicine / The Orthopedic Specialists on June 15, the first time the 19-physician practice has had a non-physician executive.

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Will ACOs really get off the ground?

The hype over accountable care organizations—something every major hospital in Indianapolis is moving to become—is increasingly being laced with skepticism as the economics behind the idea get more scrutiny.

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Show-me state stings SynCare

Indianapolis-based SynCare LLC has been touting its growth in Missouri since it entered the market in 2009. But now SynCare’s excursions in the show-me state have turned into a nightmare.

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Brokers ‘devastated’ by reform rule

The decision last year by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services not to exclude health insurance brokers commissions from a provision in the 2010 health reform law has been “devastating to brokers,” broker advocate Janet Trautwein said during an August speech in Fishers, and there are signs that Congress will act to reverse the policy.

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Gloomy outlook for medical device makers

The next four years could be rough for makers of medical devices and orthopedic implants, including Bloomington-based Cook Medical Inc. and Warsaw-based Zimmer Holding Inc. and Biomet Inc.—and not because of the 2010 health reform law.

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Roche hopes to prosper from austerity

Executives at Roche Diagnostics expect the wave of austerity measures being taken by western governments—including the United States—to as much as double its sales of fluid- and DNA-based tests in the next three years.

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Study spoils common wisdom on health spending

The Thomson Reuters study that showed Anderson as the highest-spending health care market in the nation also concluded that treatment and spending vary widely from one locale to another with no clear reason based on demographics or health outcomes.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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