Here are some of the top stories at MedCity News this week:
— Ernie Andberg has a little more free time on his hands these days. The long-time “emerging medical device companies” equity analyst for Feltl & Co. in Minneapolis has not seen a lot of companies emerging lately. In fact, they’ve been disappearing all together. Case in point: Medtronic Inc.’s (NYSE: MDT) deal last week to acquire ATS Medical Inc. in Plymouth, Minnesota, for $370 million. “The pool is kind of thinning out,” Andberg said.
— The Center for Integrative Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic’s Wellness Institute has hired staff members and added services to handle the growing demand for an holistic approach to caring for the physical, lifestyle, emotional and spiritual needs of patients. Dr. Brenda Powell, a family medicine and women’s health expert, has been appointed to the center’s medical staff at the center, which is housed at the Wellness Institute’s Lyndhurst campus. The center has begun offering holistic psychotherapy services.
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— The Cleveland Clinic has admitted that its former staff physician and inventor, Dr. Jay Yadav, did not run afoul of the health system’s conflicts of interest policy as it had claimed in 2006 while declining to renew Yadav’s employment contract. Yadav, an interventional cardiologist, entrepreneur and head of the Clinic’s innovations unit at the time of his departure, sued the institution in 2007, claiming it had done irreparable harm to his good name as a researcher and clinician by what it said about him while talking to the media.
— Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland called a victory for Issue 1 — the extension of the Ohio Third Frontier program, the state’s largest and arguably most successful, economic development program — just before midnight on Tuesday. In the end, about 62 percent of voters approved a constitutional amendment to extend Third Frontier by four years with the proceeds of a $700 million bond issue. Third Frontier is the 10-year, $1.35 billion project started by Strickland’s predecessor, Bob Taft, to energize Ohio’s economy by investing in technologies in five industry clusters, including biomedical. The project had a $6.6 billion economic impact on the state, creating nearly 50,000 jobs and more than 600 companies during its first eight years, reports have shown.
— The state’s top doctors group is lauding a decision by the Ohio Supreme Court that could limit the amount of damages paid in personal injury cases. The court decided that doctors, or other health providers involved in personal injury cases, may admit as evidence information on the amount actually paid for a procedure in question. The 5-1 ruling overturned a decision by a court of appeals that allowed only the amount billed for a procedure to be admitted as evidence. The distinction arises because insurance company’’ typically pay health providers less than what the providers bill for procedures. The difference between the two amounts is then considered a “write-off” on the part of health providers.