Aetna Inc.'s second-quarter net income tumbled almost 15 percent compared with last year, when the health insurer caught a big break from lower-than-expected leftover claims. But the latest results still beat analyst expectations, and Aetna raised its 2012 earnings forecast. In the second quarter, Aetna’s net income fell to $457.6 million, or $1.32 per share. That’s down from $536.7 million, or $1.39 per share, a year ago. Adjusted earnings, which exclude one-time items, were $1.31 per share. That topped the $1.25 per share that analysts expected. Revenue rose 6 percent to $8.84 billion, also above analyst expectations of $8.75 billion.
Humana Inc., the second-biggest provider of Medicare benefits, fell the most in more than three years after cutting its 2012 profit forecast on higher-than- anticipated costs. Humana tumbled 13 percent to $61.60 at the close in New York, its biggest single-day decline since March 2009. Earnings this year may be $6.90 to $7.10 a share, the Louisville, Kentucky-based health plan said yesterday in a statement. That was below the $7.88 average of 10 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The company generated three-quarters of sales last year from Medicare, and Chief Executive Officer Michael B. McCallister said that new members were proving more expensive.
Remote monitoring of intensive care patients—a strategy to maximize scarce medical expertise—can cost hospitals anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 per bed in the first year of operation, according to a new study. Whether this investment pays off in the long run by improving ICU patients' care and saving money, "we don't know," said Dr. Gaurav Kumar, a fellow at the University of Iowa and the lead author of the study published in the journal Chest. Kumar's review of past research on the costs and benefits of telemedicine in the ICU found a range of estimates of the technology's economic impact—from increasing hospital profits to adding a financial burden.
Andreas Tzakis, a celebrated transplant surgeon at the University of Miami, is moving to Cleveland Clinic in Weston to help establish a transplant program there—the first of perhaps a series of moves that will intensify South Florida hospital competition in the crucial, heavily publicized field. Cleveland Clinic is in the final stages of getting approval from state regulators for its transplant program—a regulatory road that the Memorial Regional and Broward Health Medical Center have also started down in direct challenges to the Miami Transplant Center, a joint UM-Jackson Memorial operation which for decades has dominated the field of adult transplants in the region. Tzakis said two other UM transplant surgeons have left this year, and he hopes that eventually he might be able to lure UM colleagues to Cleveland.
Veterans Affairs officials overseeing the construction of the new Orlando VA Medical Center told U.S. Rep. John Mica on Monday that project costs are well under budget, and that the agency won't be asking Congress for any more money for the center's construction. In a congressional hearing in March, representatives from Brasfield & Gorrie, the main contractor for the project, testified that the project was running at least $120 million over budget. Congress has appropriated $665 million for the 1.2 million-square-foot medical center, which was supposed to open in October but has been delayed. In the meeting to update Mica on the project's status, VA officials committed to a summer 2013 completion.
A study published this month in PLoS Medicine offers more troubling insight into how big money, rather than scientific inquiry, is driving and shaping much of our current medical research. This time, researchers examined the motives of the ever-increasing number of private-sector physicians—ones not affiliated with academic institutions—who serve as principal investigators, or PIs, for clinical trials funded by the pharmaceutical industry. By 2005, more than 70 percent of U.S. clinical trials were being done by nonacademic physicians. In fact, the number of private-sector physicians involved in these studies climbed from 4,000 in 1990 to a staggering 20,250 in 2010.