Three activist groups dropped off a wallet and handbag crammed with play money at WellPointâ??s front door
this week to protest what the groups say are outrageous salaries pulled down by company executives.
The groups â?? Health Care for America Now,…
Lilly Endowment Inc. is still on its journey to sell off $2 billion of its Eli Lilly and Co. shares. But after a slow start and a few stops for rest, it may take a little longer to get there than originally thought. The endowment, the single largest holder of Lilly stock, announced its plan to diversify its holdings back in July 2006. For nearly 70 years, the not-for-profit held its wealth almost exclusively in the pharmaceutical company’s stock. So…
Duke Realty Corp. has stayed largely out of the headlines this year, which in an economy like this is a pretty good sign. Another Indianapolis developer, Lauth Property Group, has shed more than half its 450-person work force, and Premier Properties Inc.- perhaps the city’s most daring developer-lurched into bankruptcy court. Meanwhile, Duke, which specializes in suburban office and industrial development, keeps on chugging. To be sure, the company isn’t immune to broader economic slowdown. In April, it laid off…
Gibson Insurance Group is the latest benefits broker to get more serious about wellness. The South Bend-based firm, which has an office in Indianapolis, has hired a dedicated wellness director to help its clients refine and assess their wellness programs for workers. Nicole Fallowfield, the former vice president of sales for Principal Wellness Co. in Indianapolis, will work out of Gibson’s downtown Indianapolis office but serve Gibson’s clients throughout Indiana. By hiring Fallowfield, Gibson joins a budding trend among brokers…
The Wellness Community of Central Indiana was established in 1995 as a not-for-profit organization to provide free support, education and hope to individuals and families affected by cancer. At The Wellness Community, cancer patients can share experiences and lend one another encouragement informally or through programs facilitated by professional counselors. The Wellness Community also provides a haven to grieve together in those instances when cancer is the ultimate victor. Today, the folks at The Wellness Community are grieving over a…
The completion of $2 billion in city construction projects has left a gaping hole in contractor job schedules-as wide as when the roof opens at Lucas Oil Stadium. Even so, industry leaders remain optimistic about staying busy despite the combination of a tepid economy and the end of a local boom that stretched the limits of the labor pool. The $1.1 billion airport midfield terminal project, the $715 million stadium and $150 million Central Library expansion helped to create so…
After four years of development, a payfor-performance plan for Indianapolisarea doctors will officially launch Oct. 1. Quality Health First, the latest service of the Indiana Health Information Exchange, now has 700 primary-care doctors signed up to receive its reports on the quality of the care they give. And perhaps even more important, the program has contracted with Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Indiana as the first health insurer to offer bonus payments to doctors based on how well…
Auto insurance rates are climbing nationally, led by increases in Indiana that topped all other states, according to a report released last month by Insurance.com. The online auto insurance agency said the lowest car insurance quotes, on average, jumped 3.4 percent, to $1,893 per year, from the first quarter to the second. Rate increases in Indiana nearly doubled the national average, rising 6.7 percent, or $94, to $1,501. Arkansas and Rhode Island followed, with 6.1-percent and 5-percent spikes, respectively. Sam…
Barack Obama is expected to announce his vice presidential running mate any day now, and Evan Bayhâ??s name
is still thought to be on the short list.
The Indiana senator is viewed as a moderate who would counter Obamaâ??s liberal voting…
WellPoint Inc. prides itself on working to hold down the rising cost of health care. But to hear one of its former vice
presidents tell it, the company retaliated against him when he worked to do just that. In a lawsuit against
WellPoint, Dr. Randy Axelrod claims his former employer forced him out when he tried to curtail a drugmaker’s
controversial pricing strategy that was costing WellPoint money.
Women aren’t leaving the work force to stay home with their kids-they’re being forced out in equal numbers with men. That’s the word from “Equality in Job Loss: Women are Increasingly Vulnerable to Layoffs During Recessions,” a congressional report released July 21. Often women who face job losses decide to forego the job hunt and opt instead for selfemployment, the report said. Might this job downturn trigger a boom in entrepreneurship for women? Not if they don’t already have the…
The promise of personalized medicine-genetic tests that allow more informed and individualized health care decisions-has been blocked in recent times as patients struggle with the fear that those same genetic test results could bring genetic discrimination in the form of cancelled health insurance coverage or even the catastrophe of job loss. In 1997, Indiana enacted a state law protecting genetic screening or testing and prohibiting health insurers from considering any information obtained from such testing in a manner adverse to…
WellPoint Inc., the most dominant health insurer in the United States, registers as barely a pipsqueak in the rest of the
world. But it’s only a matter of time, say industry experts, before WellPoint plunges into foreign markets to grow sales of
its health benefits and services.
Arming patients with portable electronic medical records that physicians can access during emergencies is becoming more prevalent among health care providers. The Heart Center of Indiana in Carmel, a partnership between St. Vincent Health and The Care Group Inc., the state’s largest cardiology group, recently started the practice. Community Health Network and Dr. Tim Story, who chairs the largest group of physicians at Clarian North Medical Center, are among others who have rolled out portable records systems. The health information…
It takes years of research for an anthropologist to understand another culture, but doctors and nurses don’t have that much time. With the growing diversity of people receiving health care in the United States, a patient’s cultural background is often ignored or misunderstood by care givers. That can make for a less-than-positive hospital stay or doctor visit or, in rare cases, a catastrophic medical mistake. To avoid any such pitfalls, Community Health Network has implemented Culture Vision, an Internet-based program…
Everybody’s doing it. So Heaton and Eadie and Katz, Sapper & Miller decided to get together, too. Katz Sapper announced last week that it will acquire Heaton and Eadie because both Indianapolis-based accounting firms expect their main health care clients-physicians-to link up more and more with one another and with hospitals in the next five years. They want the heft and experience to win the right to handle finance and consulting on more of those transactions. Katz Sapper gets Heaton…
Steve Smith has shaken up the Indiana Health
Care Association so much, the group representing Indiana’s for-profit nursing homes is hardly recognizable to those who knew
it before. And the way Smith tells it, he’s just getting started.
A recent Associated Press study of 62 major waterproviders across the country, including Indianapolis, found that nearly all their water had pharmaceutical product or indicators of pharmaceutical product in their water supply. P h a r m a c e u t i c a l products included antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones. The same AP study investigated watersheds and aquifers, large numbers of which were found to contain pharmaceuticals and other contaminants. Another national study of 139…
Nearly three-quarters of orthopedics patients in Shelby County have gone to an Indianapolis hospital to receive care. Now, Major Hospital in Shelbyville wants to keep more of those patients at home. By next June, the hospital will build a $7 million orthopedics center that will house two orthopedic surgeons. They will begin building their practices in Shelbyville next month. The play for orthopedics patients throws Major into a pitched battle among Indianapolis-area hospitals. Surging numbers of patients need new hips…
Andrea Walker is a chemist with management aspirations. But instead of signing up for a traditional MBA program, the team manager at Indianapolis-based AIT Laboratories will enroll this year in a slimmed-down business program that focuses on the life sciences. The program, called the Kelley Executive Certificate in the Business of Life Sciences, is a new creation of Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. The program will conduct most of its classes online over a one-year period. The courses will…
