BUSINESS BRIEFS: BAXTER ACQUIRES RESEARCH MEDICAL INC.

      In a stock swap valued at $236 million, BAXTER
 INTERNATIONAL, a Deerfield, IL-based global health products
 company, has agreed to buy Salt Lake City, UT-based RESEARCH
 MEDICAL INC. (MULTIPLE SOURCES, 12/5).  The acquisition "pumps
 new life in Baxter's efforts to broaden its line of products in
 treating late-stage cardiovascular disease."  Research Medical is
 one of the country's largest makers of cannulae, "tubes used to
 transfer a patient's blood to heart-lung machines during open-
 heart surgery," and has several products under development,
 including tools for minimally invasive cardiac surgery.  Mike
 Mussallem, a Baxter group vice president, said, "Research
 Medical's products complement our own.  They are a perfect fit
 and there is little or no overlap."  The deal is expected to
 close "in 60 to 90 days" (Oberbeck, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, 12/5).  
      UNITED HEALTHCARE CORP. announced Tuesday that it has "sold
 its long-term care insurance subsidiary to a group of venture
 capital firms that plan to form a new company in California." 
 The investors, Warburg-Pincus, Franklin Ventures, New Enterprise
 Associates and Pacific Ventures said that they would create LONG
 TERM CARE GROUP INC., "using the base of business purchased from
 United HealthCare of Minnetonka."  The new company, which will be
 headquartered in El Segundo, CA, "will market a fully insured
 long-term care product to consumers as well as to fully insured
 or self-insured corporations and government organizations," and
 will develop "managed care options for long term care." 
 Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE reports that the Long Term Care Group
 Inc. "will start by administering long-term care insurance for
 more than 100,000 people nationwide," including some California
 Public Employee Retirement Systems members.  Terms of the deal
 were not disclosed (Howatt, 12/4).   
      HEALTHSOURCE ARKANSAS VENTURES INC. announced yesterday that
 it will dissolve one of its largest subsidiaries, Little Rock-
 based SPRADLEY & COKER INC.  ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE reports
 that Spradley & Coker, "once the state's largest independent
 third-party administrator of corporate-funded health insurance
 plans," will refer its clients to another Little Rock company,
 Corporate Benefit Solutions Inc.  The business will close by June
 1997 because its parent company, New Hampshire-based Healthsource
 Inc., has "decided to focus" on its core HMO business (Plunkett,
 12/5).