Here are some news/notes from a day in MedCity, Minnesota:
Mayo Clinic said Thursday that it returned to profitability in 2009, thanks mostly to large investment gains and expense control.
The organization reported income of $333 million, a 4.4 percent operating margin, after breaking even in 2008. Mayo generated $7.6 billion, a 5 percent gain from 2008. Expenses grew less than one percent to $7.248 billion.
The organization’s investment portfolio earned a 12.4 percent. Mayo, however, cautioned that it “can’t rely on strong stock market performance as a stable source of funding for the long-term.”
UnitedHealth Group Inc. in Minnetonka has purchased a health screener called Wellness Inc., according to the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Wellness, a 23-year old company based in Aurora, Ill., emphasizes preventative care to manage employee health, offering biometric screenings, flu vaccinations and lifestyle-health assessments in the workplace and has more than 1,000 company clients.
The U.S. Department of Justice filed charges against Boston Scientific Corp.’s Guidant division Thursday, saying it did not fully disclose problems with its devices to regulators, according to Finance & Commerce in Minneapolis. The charges, filed in U.S. District Court in St. Paul, are part of a previously announced agreement for Boston Scientific Corp. to plead guilty to the two misdemeanor charges.
LifeScience Alley, Minnesota’s top biomedical trade organization, said it’s forming a 510(k) Action Committee to lobby against proposed changes to the Food and Drug Administration’s popular medical device approval program. In a letter to the Institute of Medicine committee empowered by Congress to examine the 510(k) program, LifeScience Alley criticized the makeup of the committee, saying it did not include any members of the medical device industry.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
