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RehabCare Group Inc. said Kevin Gross, senior vice president of hospital operations, plans to resign effective June 4.

Gross has accepted the position of president of the Oklahoma division of Ardent Health Services, a role he held prior to his tenures at Universal Health Services and RehabCare.

He has led RehabCare’s hospital division since July 2008.

Brock Hardaway, president and chief operating officer of Triumph HealthCare, which RehabCare recently bought for $570 million, has been promoted to RehabCare executive vice president, assuming leadership of the hospital division and reporting directly to RehabCare President and Chief Executive John Short.

Hardaway joined Triumph in 2005 and was appointed to manage the combined company’s long-term acute care hospital portfolio following RehabCare’s acquisition of Triumph in November 2009. He will oversee division operations from Triumph headquarters in Houston.

St. Louis-based RehabCare (NYSE: RHB) is the fourth-largest, post-acute hospital operator and the third-largest, long-term acute care hospital provider in the nation, with 28 long-term acute care hospitals and six inpatient rehabilitation facilities in 13 states. The company has more than 18,000 employees and reported $869.4 million in 2009 operating revenue.

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So now what do we do? How do we create a more entrepreneurial climate in St. Louis, and ensure the companies of the future grow here?

The short answer, the easy answer, is money, in the form of bank loans, seed funds, venture capital. But money is tight these days, and it has a tendency to follow results, not fertilize new ground. So here are a few other ideas — most already in play on a small scale — that St. Louis can build on to make its economic garden bloom.

Lower the barriers to entry — Most startups operate on a drum-tight budget. And any hurdle to opening the doors makes that budget even tighter.

Yet many entrepreneurs say they face a maze of paperwork, inspections, licenses and approvals. This takes precious time and money.

"Business assistance centers," like the one run by the city of St. Louis, try to help smooth the road for would-be business owners. More publicity for programs like these, and less paperwork in general, would be big step in the right direction.

Pull in the same direction — St. Louis has scads of people working on this problem. There are incubators and counseling programs and angel networks and mentor teams. Most do good work. But sometimes, they do the same work.

"It’s difficult sometimes for business support organizations to work together," said Eddie Davis, director of the Center for the Advancement of African-American Roundtable. "This impedes our growth."

And despite all these efforts, everyone has stories of small-business owners who don’t know the resources available to them. A more streamlined effort to steer people in the best direction would make the most of all of this.

Maybe it’s a regional clearinghouse. Maybe it’s (horrors!) a committee. Maybe it’s as simple as stronger informal networks among the many groups working on this. But more cooperation would go a long way.

Cash on the barrel — Yes, the kind of money needed to fuel lots of startups is probably too much to hope for. But small, well-targeted loan funds can make a difference. Like St. Louis County’s new Boost loan program.

Funded with a $5 million line of credit from PNC Bank, the Boost program is designed to help small businesses struggling to get bank loans, by offering funds with lower eligibility requirements, and county backing payday loans. Since January, the county has received more than 30 serious applications and will soon issue its first loans.

Small partnerships like this could augment bank lending and provide more support to startups at a relatively low cost.

Leverage our universities — Two years ago, a group of investors launched the Billiken Angel Network, a fund designed to provide seed capital to entrepreneurs with a tie to St. Louis University — students, alumni, faculty. They leverage their own money, plus $1 million in funding from SLU, to help fund startups, many of them here in St. Louis.

This region has a lot of universities. And they create a lot of ideas. Pooling investors around their ties to other local institutions, from Columbia to Rolla to Edwardsville, is a low-cost way to spark more companies that are born, and will stay, in St. Louis.

Pool Midwestern venture capital — Most of the Midwest — not just St. Louis — lags when it comes to creating high-powered, innovative startups. This is despite research universities that are among the nation’s best, and that win more than their share of federal grants, R&D funding and patents.

"But it’s not getting translated into new businesses," said John Austin, who heads the Great Lakes Economic Initiative at the Brookings Institution.

He co-authored a recent report detailing how the Midwest ships much of its venture capital to the coasts. Investing closer to home, he contends, would be profitable for all involved. More Midwest-specific funds, like the Clayton-based Mid America Healthcare Investors Network, would provide opportunity, and profit, in the region.

"We need more entrepreneurial investors," said Frank Samuel, the study’s other author.

The big steps — more state seed funding, a flood of venture capital — will help, if and when they arrive. But small steps now can help prepare the ground for entrepreneurship to bloom.

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Foreclosure notices on commercial properties in the Dallas-Fort Worth area jumped 58 percent in the first six months of 2010, Addison-based Foreclosure Listing Service Inc. said Thursday.

During that period, including foreclosures already set for June, 1,659 notices were filed on retail properties, retail buildings, office buildings, industrial spaces, apartment complexes, and commercial lands in the D-FW area. Property owners still have time to respond and avoid foreclosure.

While it’s nothing compared to the 8,000 foreclosure filings reported in one year during the late 1980s, the jump over last year has made an impact, according to Foreclosure Listing Service, which compiles foreclosure data for the region.

There are still more foreclosure postings on residential properties, said George Roddy president of Foreclosure Listing Service, but he added, “posting activity has climbed at a much steeper pace on commercial properties than on residential.”

During the first six months of 2010, foreclosure filings on buildings classified as "miscellaneous commercial properties" jumped 126 percent to 683 postings. There were in 302 last year. Meanwhile, foreclosure notices filed on commercial land jumped 72 percent, hitting 381, up from 222 postings.

Meanwhile, apartment communities saw the number of foreclosure notices filed increase 46 percent over last year. Foreclosures on office buildings increased 18 percent, while foreclosures on retail centers and buildings dropped 16 percent.

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Your Internet bill will go up $50 a month! You won’t be able to access your favorite Web site! Your Internet connection is going to slow to a crawl!

That’s just some of the rhetoric and doomsday scenarios flying back and forth over the contentious subject of "Net neutrality." Many of the sky-is-falling, self-serving arguments are standard Washington lobby shop speak, but the reality is quite different.

The talk heated up last week, after the Federal Communications Commission proposed regulatory changes that would give it a say in how the Internet is delivered to consumers.

Under the mandate, dubbed "Net neutrality," the FCC would require Internet providers, like phone and cable companies, to treat all Web content equally. That would prevent providers from restricting access to certain sites or applications, or even collecting fees to deliver some sites faster than others.

On one side, the Googles (GOOG, Fortune 500), Yahoos (YHOO, Fortune 500), Amazons (AMZN, Fortune 500) and eBays (EBAY, Fortune 500) of the world say Net neutrality is crucial because it would foster an environment where cool new things on the Web could develop, and it would prevent Internet providers from blocking access to sites like Hulu and YouTube that carry a heavy strain on the network. It would also prevent Internet providers that own media companies from favoring their own content over others’.

On the other side, the Comcasts (CMCSA, Fortune 500), AT&Ts (T, Fortune 500), Verizons (VZ, Fortune 500) and Time Warner Cables (TWC, Fortune 500) of the world say they have been able to provide very good and increasingly better Internet access to customers without any regulation from the FCC. They say Net neutrality would slow down their Internet service and that the costs would be too prohibitive.

Independent analysts say there are elements of truth to both arguments.

"There appears to be very little risk that broadband service providers would severely discriminate against traffic or content from competing companies," said Daniel Hays, partner at consultancy PRTM. "But the flip side of that is the reality that they want to be able to discriminate against applications and users that unfairly clog their networks."

Here’s a quick look at some of the changes you might see if Congress approves the FCC’s proposals:

Will my Internet bill go up?

Your broadband service probably won’t cost more than the incremental amount your bill already goes up every year.

"It’s unclear how any regulatory changes might get back to consumers," said Doug Williams, broadband analyst at Forrester Research. "That sounds like a lot of saber rattling on the part of the carriers."

But it’s not just the carriers touting higher prices. An independent Frost & Sullivan study found that a Net neutrality law could raise consumers’ broadband bills by $10 to $50 a month.

Here’s why. Regulation would make providing Internet service less cost-effective for broadband companies, according to the study. That means companies would likely stop building out their networks. However, if the FCC decided to force carriers to continue increasing capacity and service, those costs would be passed onto consumers.

Cable and phone companies have been using the report to fight the FCC’s proposal. But the study is based on the assumption that the FCC would propose broader and stricter regulations than the ones it actually has proposed.

In fact, historical precedent also suggests the Frost & Sullivan study is far fetched: After AT&T merged with Bell South in late 2006, the FCC subjected AT&T to a two-year Net neutrality rule. During that time, AT&T’s broadband prices did not rise, and AT&T actually invested more in their infrastructure on their own volition.

"Empirically, it doesn’t prove to be the case that increased regulations will result in higher consumer prices," said Markham Erikson, executive director of the Open Internet Coalition, a group that supports Net neutrality.

How would it impact my service?

Net neutrality would force Internet providers to provide their customers with access to any Web site. But that’s what the broadband companies have been doing for years — without any regulation.

It’s an extraordinarily rare occurrence when a service provider denies its customers access to a Web site, app or program. Comcast’s temporary block on some peer-to-peer networks that were clogging up its network in 2007 is one of the only examples. Some mobile companies have also instituted restrictions, like AT&T’s ban of the Sling media app on the iPhone and Verizon’s blocking of pro-abortion text messages in 2007.

"Excluding content providers does not make good business sense, especially with a growing number of alternatives, like 4G," said Mike Jude, analyst at Frost & Sullivan.

Analysts said it’s much more likely that broadband providers will begin charging customers for the amount of data they download, just like wireless companies charge more for packages with a greater number of minutes.

Since a Net neutrality law would ensure that customers can download or upload whatever they please, some are worried that users will soon experience system bottlenecks that slow down their Internet speeds (think AT&T and the iPhone). But carriers, including AT&T, continue to spend billions of dollars a year improving network capacity, and the communications industry has been resilient about making improvements during tougher regulatory periods in the past.

"Ultimately, we’re talking about very large broadband pipes out there, which can provide 100 megabit speeds," said Jude. "Is Net neutrality a concern? Yes, but that doesn’t supercede the carriers’ purpose of deploying the network in the first place." 

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Out-of-pocket costs for the millions of Americans with employer-based health coverage rose again in the past year, although at a slower pace than the year before, according to a new industry report released Tuesday.

However, as employers prepare to make health reform’s mandated changes to their benefits plans later this year, the changes could shift some costs away from workers and raise them for companies.

American workers spent 7.4% more on their health care coverage over the past year, according to the sixth annual survey conducted by health care consulting firm Milliman Inc. The increase translates to about $506 more that workers contributed to their care - $321 for their company’s health plan and $185 for employee out-of-pocket expenses.

But, in a bright spot for workers, the increase was lower than the 10.6% boost in the survey a year ago.

"Although employers are still bearing about 60% of their workers’ health care costs, this is a pretty significant amount that employees are paying," said Lorraine Mayne, principal and consulting actuary with Milliman.

"If you think about a family of four with a household income of $50,000, they are paying about 8.7% of their income in employee contribution to their coverage," she said.

The report also showed that employers’ subsidies on their workers’ coverage increased about $797, or 8%, over the past year.

According to the Census Bureau, about 177 million Americans — more than half the population — are covered by employer-provided health insurance.

Under health reform, there are four major near-term changes that companies have to make to their coverage plan that will push up their share of health care costs.

These changes include expanding dependent coverage for adult children up to age 26, removing lifetime and annual limits, eliminating co-payments and co-insurance for certain preventive services, and prohibiting any restrictions of children’s coverage for preexisting conditions.

"For many employees, these changes will increase the value of their benefits," said Mayne. "But for many others, those who don’t have adult children for instance, the changes will have little effect."

Your medical costs

Including both what employees pay and what employers contribute, the total 2010 cost of health care for a typical family of four increased 7.8% to $16,771, according to the Milliman report.

Physicians made up the biggest chunk, at 33% of total medical costs, according to the report. However, the rate of increase in physician costs declined to 5.2% from 6% in 2009.

The fastest growing component of health costs is hospital outpatient care, up 11.6%, compared to an increase of 10.2% the prior year. The report said the increase was driven by increases in the cost of care rather than people using the facility more.

Elsewhere, hospital inpatient costs increased by 9.8% and pharmacy costs rose 6.1%

In a look at 14 metropolitan areas, the report cited Miami, New York and Chicago as three cities where health care expenses are about 10% higher than the national average.

Total health care costs for a family of four exceeded $20,000 in those three cities, with Miami topping out at $22,089.

The Milliman Index is based on a national survey of more than 4,000 employers as well as data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. 

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The Obama administration took the first concrete steps Thursday to make good on its pledge to halt new offshore drilling projects, suspending the approval process for new wells off of the Virginia coast.

The Minerals Management Service, part of the Interior Department and the agency charged with issuing new drilling leases, had scheduled three public hearings in Virginia this month to solicit public comment about new wells off of the state’s coast.

The agency said on Thursday that these meetings are now suspended indefinitely, pending a government safety review of offshore drilling.

The process was halted "so that information from the ongoing review of outer continental shelf safety issues that the President has directed can be appropriately considered in those meetings," according to an MMS statement.

Last week president Obama said all new offshore drilling will be halted until the cause of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is identified.

But leases for new oil wells were not expected for at least a year, whereas the investigation should wrap up in months.

Thursday’s announcement is the first time the Obama administration has actually put the brakes on a plan to open up more areas of the country to offshore drilling bad credit pay day loans.

Obama has supported increased drilling in the past, and just a month ago opened up a few new areas for drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, off the East Coast and in Alaska.

That was the first offering of new leases in the Atlantic since 2008, when a decades-old ban on new offshore drilling expired.

Obama has emphasized he still supports increased domestic oil production, but says it needs to be done safely.

The BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, where an oil rig exploded last week, continues to unfold. Eleven of the rig’s workers are presumed dead, and oil is still leaking into the Gulf in what could be one of the worst spills in U.S. history.

The ban on offshore drilling and its subsequent lifting refer only to new drilling. A big swath of the Gulf of Mexico has always been open to oil production, and produces nearly a third of the country’s crude.  

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The manufacturing sector grew for the ninth consecutive month in April, and at its fastest rate since June 2004, according to a report released Monday.

The Tempe, Ariz.-based Institute for Supply Management (ISM) manufacturing index rose to 60.4 in April, from a March reading of 59.6. Any score above 50 indicates growth in the manufacturing sector.

April’s number is slightly better than expected, driven by increases in productivity, new orders and manufacturing jobs. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com were expecting a reading of 60.

"Overall, the recovery in manufacturing continues quite strong, and the signs are positive for continued growth," Norbert Ore, chairman of the ISM’s survey committee, said in a release.

Of the 18 industries surveyed in the report, 17 reported growth. Apparel, non-metallic minerals and wood products were among the industries showing the strongest growth.

New orders, productivity, imports and commodity prices all rose at faster rates in April than the month before, indicating that demand for products is driving a recovery in manufacturing.

As for factory jobs, trends continue to look up. The employment component of the report grew for the fifth consecutive month, rising to 58.5 in April from 55.1 the month before.

"It affirms something we already know — manufacturing is in a full-blown recovery," said Tim Quinlan, an economist with Wells Fargo Securities. "Now, the markets are waiting for that recovery to spread to other sectors."

The inventories part of the index shrunk slightly in April, though, to just under 50 — the tipping point — from 55.3 in March.

That decline is not entirely surprising, Quinlan said, as manufacturers are still taking their time to rebuild inventories after scaling back at unprecedented rates during the recession.

The ISM manufacturing index is determined by a survey of purchasing managers and reflects the number of people who say economic conditions are better, compared with those who say conditions are worse. While the index can paint a picture of broad trends, some analysts warn that because it stems from a survey, the index can be subjective. 

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Revenue took a 26 percent dive to $261 million at equipment rental firm RSC Holdings Inc. during the first quarter.

The Scottsdale company (NYSE:RRR) reported a first-quarter net loss of $38 million, or 37 cents per diluted share, compared with a loss of $14 million, or 13 cents, for first-quarter 2009. The bottom line primarily reflects a decline in business activity and the resulting impact on volume and pricing, although that impact was partially offset by cost-cutting initiatives, officials said in announcing financials Thursday.

“While operating in a still-challenging economy, we drove utilization up with momentum building throughout the quarter. Our industrial diversification strategy and transition to playing offense enabled us to meet or exceed our first quarter revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and free cash flow expectations,” said CEO Erik Olsson in a statement. “To build on this momentum, we continued to position the company for the future with five new location openings, selective investment in our rental fleet and further investment in our sales and marketing organization with an emphasis on key account management.”

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