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Australian-born luxury ‘healing’ spa opens in Conrad: Spa Chakra touts healthy benefits of its treatments

A world-renowned, high-end luxury spa that originated in Australia and partners with a Parisian skin-care and fragrance company has chosen Indianapolis for its second U.S. facility. Spa Chakra, which uses Guerlain SA products exclusively, opened in the new Conrad Indianapolis Hotel in May. There are 16 Spa Chakra locations worldwide, but only one other in the United States-in Portland, Ore. Locations are expected to open in Bal Harbour, Fla., later this year and in Washington, D.C., in 2007. The spa,…

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Indiana midwife debate headed for another round: Committee to study issue; bill set to be reintroduced

A bill that would give women what some say is their right to choose where and how they can give birth has been incubating in the state’s General Assembly for eight years. But hopes are running high for the proposed law that would regulate and expand midwifery in Indiana because it will be studied by a special committee this summer for a possible reintroduction in the 2007 legislative session. Under current Indiana law, only doctors and registered nurses are able…

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Moratorium nearing its expiration date: Experts don’t expect flurry of new specialty hospitals

Health care experts don’t predict a surge in specialty hospital construction after a federal moratorium expires next month. Even so, the rift between competing industry interests is expected to intensify. Moratoriums on new physician-owned heart, orthopedic and surgical specialty hospitals dating back to the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 temporarily stalled the rapid growth of the facilities. In Indianapolis, three such hospitals-the Heart Center of Indiana, the Indiana Heart Hospital and the Indiana Orthopaedic Hospital-opened between December 2002 and March…

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VIEWPOINT: Consumers should take charge of health

In an environment where we’re all being asked to pay a larger share of our own health care costs, it’s interesting to see how little time we spend thinking about major decisions that have an impact on our health. Like selecting a primary care physician or any medical specialist, for example. According to a recent Managed Care Weekly Digest survey, 67 percent of U.S. adults ages 18-64 said they spent eight hours or more researching an automobile purchase, yet only…

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Firm may hold key to earlier detection: Startup lands grants for breast cancer biomarker

Linda Malkas’ arrival at the Indiana University School of Medicine four years ago is beginning to look like a coup for the city’s life sciences initiative. Armed with promising cancer research, Malkas helped found CS-Keys Inc., which last month received a $285,000 infusion from BioCrossroads’ Indiana Seed Fund and is poised to net a similar investment July 17 from Triathlon Medical Ventures in Cincinnati. The additional capital is critical to the startup’s continuing development of a biomarker that detects breast…

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Alley’s new aim: Consolidate electronics industry: Ex-banker shooting for $170M in revenue by 2012

Since purchasing Escient Solutions in early 2003 and changing its name to Electronic Evolutions Inc., Mike Alley has increased revenue 35 percent, to $6.5 million. That’ll be small potatoes if Alley’s dreams for the company pan out. Alley, former Fifth Third Bank of Central Indiana president and CEO, wants to be a consolidator in the fragmented electronics and automation design and installation industry. Toward that end, he partnered in late June with electronics industry veteran Daniel Knotts and formed E2…

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Westview soldiers on amid health care explosion: Hospital fares well against larger, newer competition

A touch-screen directory, a grove of potted trees and a muffin-bearing kiosk greet visitors entering the six-story atrium at the new Clarian North Medical Center in Carmel. A much milder scene awaits people walking into Westview Hospital a few miles away, on the west side of Indianapolis. There, a lonely player piano spills soft tunes into a one-story lobby filled with clusters of chairs and pamphlets on volunteering. “Quiet! Healing in Progress” reads a nearby sign. Indiana’s lone osteopathic hospital…

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NOTIONS: Of sexual predators, pit bulls and oddly lesser evils

God, she’s cute: Your little Paula or Patti or Pammy. Sitting there on the swing set, rocking back and forth, back and forth, her brunette locks blowing in the breeze. You watch her on the merry-go-round, spinning faster and faster. Watch her on the jungle gym, climbing higher and higher. Watch her and her little friend Annie or Jenny or Missy walking toward the trail into the woods. And you know you aren’t the only one watching. You know he’s…

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Carmel firm grows up in emerging market: BlueBean acquisition makes it one-stop RFID shop

A small Indiana firm is looking to become a big player in the emerging radio-frequency-identification market. Carmel-based BlueBean LLC is one of a small but growing number of firms nationally that provide consulting services to companies trying to set up systems using radio frequency identification-commonly called RFID-tags and readers. BlueBean in April acquired Mishawakabased www.rfidsupplychain.com, which sells RFID hardware and software online. The acquisition also provided BlueBean rights to a bevy of other domain names, including www.rfidhealthcare.com, www.rfidpharma.comand www.rfidfood.com. The…

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Doctor takes on state over Medicaid payments: Psychiatrist claims he’s being forced out of business

A Franklin psychiatrist has accused the state agency that runs Medicaid of suffocating his practice in a reimbursement dispute that dates back more than a year. Dr. John Lewis said the weekly Medicaid checks that keep his Harmony Center open dwindled to nothing for four straight weeks after he filed a lawsuit in April against the state Family and Social Services Administration over a payment review it imposed. The psychiatrist believes his center may survive only another month, a closing…

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Patient safety center steers clear of the blame game: New approach modeled after aviation industry

Indiana hospitals are drawing inspiration from the aviation industry for their latest push to reduce medical errors. The Indiana Patient Safety Center, which opened July 1, will foster a blamefree approach to reporting errors, much like the environment promoted by the Federal Aviation Administration. The result will be a culture that encourages system analysis to fix flaws that lead to an error, rather than one that merely heaps blame on the person who committed it, said Bob Morr, vice president…

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New law puts brakes on nursing home construction: State pushing other forms of long-term health care

Families want more long-term-care options for their elderly loved ones these days, and Indiana officials are trying to lend a hand. The state will begin a year-long moratorium on nursing home construction July 1, shortly after the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration starts a marketing campaign called Options to let Hoosiers know they have choices outside of stashing Grandma at Shady Acres for a couple of years. Indiana also will boost Medicaid reimbursement for these options, which include assisted…

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ECONOMIC ANALYSIS: Health care cost ‘solutions’ only worsen the problems

As an economic forecaster, I am almost always optimistic. But that’s not a personality trait. It’s the nature of the business. The economy around us is doing amazingly well. We’ve had much longer economic expansions, steady job and income growth, and less frequent recessions for more than two decades now. So when you deliver an optimistic forecast these days, you stand a pretty good chance of being right. But if there’s one area where my optimism vanishes, it is this-how…

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From Ukraine with love: Helping the elderly remain independent and at home is the fundamental goal of home-health-agency founder

When Etelka Froymovich immigrated to Indianapolis in 1977, the Ukrainian-born pediatric nurse found the only job available to her was as an aide at Colonial Crest, a local nursing home later purchased by Arkansas-based Beverly Enterprises. She had never worked with the elderly, but quickly found her life’s passion. Twenty years after arriving in the city, Froymovich opened Home Services Unlimited, a licensed home-health care agency on the northwest side that provides care for elderly and developmentally disabled people. Overcoming…

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Golf club member tees off investors: Lawsuit over $7.4M in losses casts light on little-regulated world of penny-stock promotion

By the time he graduated in 1985, Tony Altavilla ranked third in career touchdown receptions at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, an all-male institution that likens itself to the best conservative liberal arts colleges of New England. His star rose again recently, when the member of Carmel’s Crooked Stick Country Club led a committee that helped the Pete Dye-designed course score the 2009 U.S. Senior Open Championship. But the Wabash man and golfing buddy of the affluent now finds himself in…

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EYE ON THE PIE: What if we moved the elderly out of state?

“Don’t write about this,” Sid Simpleton told me. He is the state’s social policy director. “People who have recently experienced the loss of a loved one do not like death discussed without appropriate gravity.” “I’ll warn them not to read the column if they have recently had such a loss,” I said. Sipping gin and tonics on a warm spring afternoon does make the troubles of the world seem less serious. “OK, if you think it’s safe,” Sid said. “This…

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“No habla ingles”: Immigrants who want to advance find many programs to help them learn English

No habla inglesImmigrants who want to advance find many programs to help them learn English Osvaldo Escobedo was hungry to learn English. It was bad enough when he couldn’t advance at the Nissan Motor Co. plant in Aguascalientes, in central Mexico, because he couldn’t converse in the business language of English. Later, when he came to the United States, he couldn’t eat much more than what he could pronounce. “When I go to restaurant, I ask [for] ‘coffee and doughnuts….

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2005 sees another drop in health insurance complaints: Regulators work to refine method for tracking problems

Complaint totals sank steeply last year for many Indiana health insurers, partly because the state insurance department continues to revamp its often-maligned method of tracking them. Regulators recorded 1,232 signed complaints last year, a 30-percent drop from 2004, according to figures published on the consumer section of the Indiana Department of Insurance Web site. The drop from earlier years is even steeper. The department recorded 3,133 complaints in 2002 and 1,848 the next year. Many of Indiana’s largest insurers also…

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ECONOMIC ANALYSIS: Beware of battles brewing among health care giants

Coming up with simple metaphors and images that faithfully represent the issues involved in the way we pay for health care in our country is a challenge. But one keeps coming to my mind: the kitsch Japanese sci-fi classic “Godzilla vs. Rodan,” where two giant monsters duke it out breathing fire and smashing buildings as the residents of Tokyo quake in fear, waiting to see who will win. Some similarly big battles are brewing in the health care business these…

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Standard Life turns page, rolls with changes: A year after sale, firm improves rating, makes profit

Standard Life Insurance Company of Indiana has much to celebrate as it passes the one-year anniversary of its sale to Capital Assurance Corp. Profitability, a rating upgrade and product launches all are among the positives the company can tout since it gained new life and left behind old owner Standard Management Corp. last June. Standard Life notched a $15.8 million profit last year, due mostly to a gain from the sale of its life insurance business. Subtract that, though, and…

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