News in brief - May 5, 2003

Hospitalist company expands further into Texas - Stanford sells Internet-based service - Vascular Solutions reports sales gain, overall loss in first quarter - HCA Inc. cuts jobs - Florida allows RxNetwork to continue operating - Quintiles accepts buyout offer

Hospitalist company expands further into Texas

IPC, a North Hollywood, Calif.-based hospitalist company, has expanded into a fourth Texas market with the acquisition of Hospitalists of San Antonio, a practice with six full-time and 10 part-time physicians. IPC already had a presence in Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston.

IPC works with more than 4,000 referring physicians and 1,000 health plans around the country. It also has locations in Chicago, Denver, Oakland, Calif., Phoenix, St. Louis and Tucson, Ariz. IPC employs more than 300 physicians across the nation.

Stanford sells Internet-based service

Stanford University has sold Skolar Inc. to Wolters Kluwer, a global publisher of health, legal, tax, business and educational information. Terms were not disclosed.

Skolar, of Palo Alto, Calif., is a high-speed medical search service that lets doctors access medical information online at the point of care while earning continuing medical education credits. Wolters Kluwer will integrate the Skolar product with other health information software products it owns, including clinical decision support software for hospitals.

Vascular Solutions reports sales gain, overall loss in first quarter

Vascular Solutions Inc., the Minneapolis-based manufacturer of interventional devices for cardiologists and radiologists, reported a 6% gain in net sales in the first quarter of 2003 over the same period of 2002. It still reported a net loss, however, in its overall statement.

The company reported a net loss of nearly $2.6 million during the first quarter of 2003, for a loss of 20 cents a share. But those losses are down significantly from the previous year. In the first quarter of 2002, the firm reported a loss of about $3.5 million, for a per-share loss of 27 cents. Sales grew from $2.8 million in the first quarter of 2002 to more than $2.9 million during the same period of 2003.

"The first quarter kept us on pace for our primary goal of profitability and substantial growth," said Howard Root, CEO of Vascular Solutions.

The company, whose primary product is the Duett sealing device, which is used to help physicians seal puncture wounds in blood vessels in catheterization procedures, has four new products in development. Root said the company hoped to receive regulatory approval for the products and launch them later this year.

HCA Inc. cuts jobs

HCA Inc., the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain, has cut about 130 jobs in its corporate division to eliminate positions duplicated when it acquired the nonprofit Health Midwest hospital system.

HCA spokesman Jeff Prescott said most of the employees filling the 400 full-time positions in the corporate division of Kansas City, Mo.-based Health Midwest were redeployed elsewhere, including some to hospitals in the Kansas City area.

Under a sale completed April 1, HCA acquired 12 Health Midwest hospitals for $1.1 billion. As part of the deal, HCA agreed to assume about $183 million of debt and leases and pledged to commit at least $450 million in capital expenditures to improve the hospitals. HCA paid $855 million in cash at closing, according to company statements.

Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA owns and operates nearly 200 hospitals and other health care facilities in 24 states, England and Switzerland.

Florida allows RxNetwork to continue operating

The Florida Board of Pharmacy has accepted an administrative law judge's recommendation that RxNetwork should continue operating because state regulators failed to prove that the Internet pharmacy posed a danger to Florida residents.

The Florida Dept. of Health sought to shut down RxNetwork in 2002, filing 27 charges accusing the Davie, Fla.-based pharmacy of improperly prescribing online. But state administrative law judge Daniel Manry earlier this year dismissed all but one of the charges against the Internet pharmacy. Manry found that RxNetwork had dispensed excessive quantities of diet pills to 24 patients and fined the pharmacy $24,000.

Quintiles accepts buyout offer

Quintiles Transnational Corp. has accepted a $1.7 billion buyout offer from its chair and founder, Dennis Gillings. The company, which runs clinical trials and rents sales representatives to pharmaceutical companies, rejected Gillings' initial offer and put itself up for sale. Several bidders emerged but Gillings won the auction after he agreed to pay $14.50 a share in cash for Quintiles, or 29% more than the $11.50 he had originally offered.