Around Indiana, hospitals continue to grow and add workers, increasing their role as an economic driver to the state’s economy.
But health care reformers say hospital growth has a double edge, as higher health care costs dampen growth prospects for other
Indiana employers and their workers.
This month’s merger of the law firm Sommer Barnard PC into Cincinnatibased Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP likely will cause salaries for starting lawyers to escalate citywide. That’s because, starting June 1, Taft plans to pay its first-year associates here $107,500-more than the $100,000 firstyear associates currently make at the highest-paying Indianapolis firms. If history is any indication, the topthree Indianapolis firms of Ice Miller LLP, Baker & Daniels LLP and Barnes & Thornburg LLP, and likely a few others,…
A while back, I had lunch with my friend John. As is our wont, we talked about politics, religion, our families, joys, frustrations. When the subject turned to work, John told me he’s trying a new approach to fund raising and “friend-raising” for his small not-for-profit cancer agency. He’s cutting out the big, time-consuming special event and simply inviting people in for a one-hour introduction to medically under-served cancer patients and how his organization helps. I told him I’d like…
Leadership has its rewards Health info exchange is exhibit A Being the best isn’t everything, but it goes a long way when you’re trying to attract money and expertise. That’s why it’s significant that the Indiana Health Information Exchange is taking its show on the road. As IBJ reporter J.K. Wall reported last week, those who oversee the platform for sharing patient records and test results electronically are preparing to make it available in other states. Hospitals and physicians in…
On the eve of the allegedly crucial Ohio presidential primary, I e-mailed a friend in Columbus to ask what it’s like in a state where primaries matter. Her response spoke of endless phone calls from volunteers and machines, get-outthe-vote visits to her neighborhood, yard signs everywhere, nonstop commercials on TV and candidate visits galore. I lamented that Indiana would never experience such a thing. I stand corrected. Thanks to the never-ending Democratic contest between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack…
Whirlpool is struggling with its employees in Evansville as it tries to keep a lid on escalating health
care costs.
The company says it has caught a few dozen of them smoking. That wouldnâ??t be a problem had the…
Ask Cathy Molchan the cost of installing the electronic medical record system in a doctor’s office she administers, and she gives a clear, quantified answer: $80,000. Ask her whether the system saves the practice any money, and her answer is less concrete. “It can definitely save money because of the time savings,” said Molchan, practice administrator for Dr. Leo Bonaventura, an infertility specialist at Clarian North Medical Center. “You can actually be focused more on what you need to do,…
New patient satisfaction scores compiled by the federal government and posted online give consumers more feedback than ever regarding the care hospitals provide. The usefulness of that information is up for debate. On its Hospital Compare Web site, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services tracks technical measures that show how often hospitals provide certain types of care that is recommended for patients treated for various conditions-heart attacks or pneumonia, for instance. Starting late last month, the agency began including…
Building these facilities i n proven “growth markets” such as Boone and Hamilton counties, however, should prove more prosperous, insists St. Vincent CEO Vincent Caponi. A more upscale demographic is the telling factor. Yet, the network of hospitals is not about to abandon its purpose of serving the needy. “That doesn’t mean the poor and underserved aren’t going to be coming to our front door,” Caponi said. “That’s always been part of our mission. We will continue [to], and gladly,…
Guests attending the April 19 open house at the newly remodeled St. Francis Hospital-Mooresville will get a sneak peak at the facility’s $42 million makeover. The project increases the size of the campus from 258,000 square feet to almost 400,000 and adds everything from a new, eight-bed intensive care unit to two additional adult inpatient nursing units. But perhaps the most innovative touch-at least from an aesthetic point of view-can be found on the roof. Like a handful of other…
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Jones, I can no longer be your doctor-at least not this side of the county line.” Patients would no doubt find it strange to hear these words from their family doctor, but longstanding law in Indiana says doctors may enter into noncompetition agreements that prohibit them from treating patients in certain geographic areas for a limited time. In March, the Indiana Supreme Court issued its first comprehensive ruling on physician noncompetition agreements in more than 20 years…
My wife, Janie, and I made some new friends on our recent trip to Israel, including Moira Carlstedt, president of the Indianapolis Neighborhood Housing Partnership. I happily cede my space this week for her observations of the trip. It is like any hospital room in Indianapolis-except you can see the Lebanese border from the window, and you stand amid damage from a Hezbollah rocket that tore through that window. And then you understand the need for the underground hospital that…
“It’s jobs, jobs, jobs,” presidential and gubernatorial candidates shouted last week in Indiana. And the crowds responded in the affirmative, urging the candidates to promise more jobs for more Hoosiers. OK; jobs are good, but well-paying jobs are better. Since the 1980s, the state has claimed it is interested only in jobs that pay above the average for the area in which they are located. When challenged by the fact that the jobs being acclaimed do not always meet that…
In recent months, our governor and mayors across the state proudly have announced business developments and out-of-state companies’ plans to expand or relocate in Indiana. They’ve worked overtime to earn these economic boosts, and they’re to be congrat ulated for helping bolster the state and local economy. But we’re ignoring a simple strategy that could yield many more high-paying jobs: Buy local. Here’s the irony: Pursuing this strategy doesn’t have to cost a dime. No recruiting trips to China, no…
The Crossroads of America is at a crossroads-a transportation crossroads. And the direction we choose will affect our area’s competitiveness and economy for decades. It’s imperative that we embrace mass transit. Mass transit matters because it correlates to a key concern for companies planning to move or expand: access to a qualified work force. In choosing a community, companies assess obvious factors such as site acquisition costs and taxation, but even those typically take a back seat to work-force access….
I’ve been looking over some business polls from 2007 and 2008, and I have to tell you I’m disappointed. As a technology columnist, I’d hoped that companies would be perpetually lathered over all sorts of thorny technical issues that only new purchases could solve and that I could critique. Silly me. But still, I went into the exercise with high hopes. After all, isn’t every aspect of a business permeated by breakable, worrisome technology of all kinds? And doesn’t every…
Most free-lance writers eke out a living. The most fortunate live comfortable lives. But Mindy Mascaro turned her freelance writing business into a thriving company. Carmel-based ExaroMed LLC is now producing sales and marketing content for the like of Roche Diagnostics, Eli Lilly and Co. and Amgen Inc. It has also served smaller life sciences companies such as Indigo BioSciences Inc. and Cheetah Medical Inc. The company has zoomed from six employees to 20 in the last year. It’s already…
Property tax reform took center stage during the just-completed session of the Indiana General Assembly. But lawmakers also grappled with a host of other measures with business implications. A roundup appears below. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT One of the session’s most divisive issues-whether to penalize companies that hire illegal immigrants-died during the waning hours. Under the legislation, introduced by Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel, companies could have had their business licenses suspended, or revoked after three instances. The Senate and House passed…
Anthem Insurance Co. added nearly 75,000 commercial customers last year, pushing its total up more than 4 percent. Anthem,
a subsidiary of Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc., now claims a whopping 1.8 million commercial customers in the state. The
trouble is, Anthem’s dominance limits price competition, according to benefits brokers, making it hard for local HMOs such
as M-Plan or even some national players to compete.
As Eli Lilly and Co. fends off allegations in an Alaskan courtroom involving its top-selling Zyprexa drug, the pharmaceutical giant is locked in another battle closer to home. The dispute winding through U.S. District Court in Indianapolis concerns the billion-dollar cancer drug Gemzar and Lilly’s attempts to prevent rivals from selling generic versions. While patent-infringement claims may be less intriguing than accusations that Lilly failed to warn doctors and patients about complications related to Zyprexa, the Gemzar case still has…
