The prospect of healthcare reform looms large for 2010.
Reform could benefit hospitals, medical device and drug makers and others if it ends up providing insurance to more people and spurs demand for products and services.
But reform has to be paid for, which has led to proposed taxes that could eat into profits.
Medical device makers face a $2 billion yearly tax as part of proposed healthcare legislation. Local device executives led an effort to have the proposed tax scaled back from an original proposal of $4 billion.
Drug makers are looking at an $8 billion a year tax to fund healthcare reform.
And Irvine’s Allergan Inc. and others are fighting a proposal to tax cosmetic medical procedures that would raise $6 billion in 10 years.
Beyond reform, 2010 stands to be busy for several local healthcare companies.
Irvine-based heart valve maker Edwards Lifesciences Corp. is set to continue a U.S. trial for its Sapien valve, which is inserted via a catheter and doesn’t require major surgery.
Sapien, which is sold in Europe, could go before the Food and Drug Administration next year. Sapien and rival devices are seen as the biggest advancement in heart valves in years.
Santa Ana-based Abbott Medical Optics Inc., a maker of eye surgery devices and contact lens care products that’s part of Abbott Park, Ill.-based Abbott Laboratories, is looking for Food and Drug Administration approval of its Synchrony replacement lens for cataract patients next year.
Abbott Medical got Synchrony through its parent company’s $400 million buy of Irvine’s Visiogen Inc. in September.
The county’s hospitals are set to be comparatively quiet in 2010 after a building boom earlier this decade, with a couple of major projects in the works.
Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian is set to open its Hoag Hospital Irvine in the summer after a renovation (see more details below).
Kaiser Permanente, the Oakland-based not-for-profit that runs the county’s largest health maintenance organization, will continue working on its $850 million healthcare complex in Ana-heim that includes a hospital, two medical office buildings, a central utility plant and a parking structure.
The project, the largest in the county, is set to be done in 2013.
Employers that provide healthcare for their workers are set to pay more in premiums in 2010, though the rate of increase isn’t expected to be as steep as in year’s past.
Companies in the county and other parts of Southern California could see costs go up 6% to 10% next year, depending on whether they make changes to their current plans, according to New York-based consulting company Mercer LLC.
PERSON TO WATCH: RICHARD AFABLE
Richard Afable, chief executive of Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, is heading up his hospital’s first expansion beyond Newport Beach.
He’s overseeing an $85 million transformation of the former Irvine Regional Hospital and Medical Center into Hoag Hospital Irvine.
The hospital, which closed in early 2009, is set to reopen in the summer.
Hoag took over the lease of the hospital from longtime Dallas-based operator Tenet Healthcare Corp., which has cut back its local operations in recent years.
Afable had been looking to expand Hoag’s operations in Newport Beach, spending as much as $390 million.
The Irvine hospital is set to add 175 beds to Hoag’s 500 or so in Newport Beach.
—Vita Reed
COMPANY TO WATCH: VERTOS MEDICAL INC.
Aliso Viejo-based Vertos Medical Inc. is set to roll out a spinal treatment next year that could catch the eye of some bigger medical device companies.
In early 2010, Vertos plans to come out with what it calls its “mild” system, which stands for minimally invasive lumbar decompression system.
The product is used to treat lumbar spinal stenosis, or a narrowing of the spinal canal.
The company has plenty of money for the product launch. Vertos raised $15.5 million in an October round of venture funding. Since the company’s 2005 start, it has raised $32.5 million.
Vertos is run by James Corbett, a veteran of several medical device makers with local roots. Before coming to Vertos last year, Corbett was chief executive of Ev3 Inc., a Minnesota-based maker of devices to treat arterial disease with about 350 workers in Irvine.
—Vita Reed
