Business news in brief

Philadelphia's Health Care Innovation Collaborative, launched in May by the region's largest health insurer, its top academic medical centers, Comcast Corp., and others, on Wednesday plans to announce its first open call for ideas to "tackle our most persistent health-care challenges." The collaborative grew out of a CEO Council for Growth task force chaired by John Fry, president of Drexel University, and Dan Hilferty, president and chief executive of Independence Blue Cross. The idea of the collaborative was to create a "front door," allowing innovators to gain access to the help of collaborative members, Fry said in May. - Harold Brubaker

Sticker shock is likely to keep three proposals to repurpose an unused rail right of way in the city from becoming a reality, officials from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission said Tuesday. The organization spent more than a year studying possible reuses for the 1.6-mile City Branch and concluded it would be difficult to raise the more than $100 million needed to repurpose the route. The branch is a former freight rail pathway running through a trench and tunnel system behind the Rodin Museum and the Barnes Foundation, past the Art Museum, terminating near 33d Street and the Schuylkill River. Rail cars have not used the route since the early 1990s, when they delivered paper to The Inquirer's former home on Broad Street. - Jason Laughlin

Mason Asset Management and Namdar Realty Group, both of Great Neck, N.Y., are the new owners of Voorhees Town Center, they said Tuesday. Mason and Namdar bought the 732,000-square-foot Camden County mall from Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust on Oct. 27, marking their sixth acquisition from the Philadelphia-based mall developer. PREIT said last month that it had sold the property for $13.4 million after learning that one of its anchor stores planned to close. The new owners said that there is no evidence of any immediate anchor closures. - Jacob Adelman

Stucco contractor Alberto El Romero, of the 600 block of Mifflin Street in South Philadelphia, was cited for failing to set up safe scaffolding for his workers. The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration has proposed that El Romero pay $51,590 in penalties after alleging that the contractor allowed employees to work on scaffolds without guard rails, proper planks and toe guards at a building site on the 1000 block of South Seventh Street on Nov. 5. The company also did not insist that workers wear hard hats and did not provide fall protection training, OSHA said. The company was issued citations for two serious and five repeat violations. El Romero acknowledged that the situation was dangerous, but said that he fixed it and that no one was hurt. - Jane Von Bergen

The interim chief executive of embattled Radnor oil producer Penn Virginia Corp. told investment analysts Tuesday that the company has suspended a search for a new CEO until it completes restructuring. "We just felt there was too much noise going on trying to bring somebody in now," said Edward B. Cloues, the chairman of Penn Virginia, who stepped in after chief executive H. Baird Whitehead announced his retirement Oct. 26. Cloues described the company's leaders as energized and optimistic. "We think we're going to work our way through these issues," he said. "Certainly, there's a lot of wood to chop." Penn Virginia's shares closed Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange at 65 cents, down 16.9 cents, or 20.6 percent. - Andrew Maykuth

Valeant Pharmaceuticals CEO J. Michael Pearson, trying to stop the slide in his company's stock price, said Tuesday that he was assured by management of Hatboro-based Philidor RX Services L.L.C. that it did nothing wrong, and then he defended the decision to dump Philidor, Valeant's only specialty pharmacy. With the Valeant relationship ending, Philidor will cease operations by Jan. 30, putting several hundred employees out of work. Valeant is cutting prices to avoid losing customers because of any supply disruption. Its stock closed down 2.03 percent on Tuesday, at $83.68 a share. Its 52-week high was $263.81. Philidor, which also has a facility in Horsham, filled mostly dermatology prescriptions for Valeant, accounting for about 7 percent of sales, Pearson said. - David Sell

Trib Total Media will lay off more than 150 employees at year's end and consolidate its three main daily newspapers in the Pittsburgh metro area as part of a reorganization intended to bolster its digital delivery of news, the company said. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the Tribune-Review in Greensburg and the Valley News Dispatch in Tarentum will become a single paper, the Tribune-Review, the company said. The company also is closing its printing operation in Greensburg. - Associated Press

Stocks reversed course and moved mostly higher, breaking a four-day losing streak. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 27.73 points, or 0.2 percent, to 17,758.21. The Standard & Poor's 500 index added 3.14 points, or 0.2 percent, to 2,081.72. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite gave up 12.06 points, or 0.2 percent, to 5,083.24. -

AP