MediterraneanGrocery Wholesalers in Austin, TX

HOUSTON, April 17, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- IVX Health, a national provider of outpatient infusion and injection centers, today announced its expansion into Texas with 13 new infusion centers planned for the greater Austin and Houston metros. IVX Health will open nine infusion centers in Houston and four infusion centers in Austin – with locations in San Antonio opening in summer 2024. The addition of the Texas markets brings IVX Health's national footprint to over 100 centers across 31 markets — and growing.

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IVX's infusion centers in Houston will be conveniently located in the communities of Bellaire, Cinco Ranch, Clear Lake, Cypress, Katy, Spring, Sugar Land, The Woodlands, and the Medical Center area. Multiple locations are already open and caring for new patients, with additional locations opening over the next several months. Four IVX Health infusion centers were previously operated under the brand SI Therapeutics prior to IVX Health's ownership beginning in April 2024.

In Austin, IVX's footprint expands across the Arbor Walk, Cedar Park, Pflugerville, and South Austin neighborhoods. Arbor Walk and Cedar Park are currently accepting new patients, while Pflugerville and South Austin are slated to open later in 2024.

"We recognize the meaningful impact IVX makes in the lives of specialty biologic patients receiving ongoing infusion or injection therapy," noted Cullen Pabody, regional vice president for IVX Health Texas. "Our uniquely designed centers guarantee an experience of the highest caliber – ensuring patients always receive care in a safe, comfortable, and convenient way. Specialty providers also find immense value in how IVX helps facilitate the referral process by managing prior authorizations and benefits eligibility with speed and precision. We are confident IVX is the infusion provider of choice for referring specialists and their patients."

All IVX Health centers include guaranteed private suites and flexible scheduling – with appointments available after work and school as well as on Saturdays. Locations also feature amenities such as TVs with streaming options, comfortable recliners, and complimentary snacks. IVX's team of nurse practitioners and registered nurses ensure a low 1:3 nurse-to-patient ratio and have the same safety standards and protocols as found in a traditional hospital-based setting.

"As a biologic patient with a three-year history at IVX Health, I've experienced consistent, genuine, and personal care firsthand," said Cam Wiggins. "The team's unwavering support and meaningful relationships have been crucial throughout my journey with multiple sclerosis, ensuring I never faced it alone. I feel truly grateful for the connections and commitment from my IVX team."

Learn more about Cam's story here.

IVX Health's innovative approach to specialty biologic administration has enabled the company to continue its swift expansion to become one of the nation's largest outpatient infusion providers. With more than 100 centers across the United States and nearly 70 therapies on its active formulary, IVX Health's ultimate goal is to impact the lives of as many patients as possible.

For more information on IVX Health and its services, visit www.ivxhealth.com.

IVX Health Austin

IVX Health Houston

About IVX Health

IVX Health is a national provider of infusion and injection therapy for those with complex chronic conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, multiple sclerosis, and other conditions.

IVX Health's national footprint of outpatient infusion centers are conveniently located in the communities where patients live and work. IVX Health's experience-first model includes amenities such as flexible appointment scheduling with evening and weekend availability, guaranteed private suites, high-speed Wi-Fi, flat screen TVs with streaming TV and movies, and comfortable recliners with room for guests. For more information on IVX Health and its existing locations, visit www.ivxhealth.com.

SOURCE IVX Health

Signs of turmoil at Tesla continued after the company told employees Monday it would lay off more than 10% of the workforce to cut costs. Two senior executives also resigned.

The job cuts, which amount to about 14,000 people across the company’s global operations, will be felt in Austin, where Tesla is one of the biggest employers.

Bob Sechler, the assistant managing editor at the Austin Business Journal, said it is not entirely clear how those layoffs will play out for Austin-based Tesla employees. The company employed nearly 23,000 people at its plant in eastern Travis County as of the end of 2023 and is also building facilities in Buda and Kyle.

“We don’t know if that [10% figure] will be what we will see in Austin. If we did see that, that would be more than 2,000 people,” he said. “But you also could think that since we’re a hub, and one of the reasons Elon Musk gave was to reduce redundancies around the world, that maybe he would not cut as deeply in Austin.”

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Sechler said the Austin Business Journal has heard from over a dozen employees that have been laid off in Central Texas. Company-wide, the layoffs appear to be taking place across divisions and departments.

“Just from seeing the people who announced basically on social media that they had been laid off, they seemed to run the gamut of positions,” he said said. “We had people in software development, people in engineering. We had people in business development say they had been laid off.

“And that’s obviously not just in Austin. We saw people posting on social media they’ve been laid off in California, in Nevada. So these are widespread layoffs, and they don’t appear at this point to be targeted at one area of the company.”

» MORE: When cars run on batteries, not gas, where will we go for a fill-up?

Musk said Tesla has grown so fast that it needed to cut redundancies. However, Sechler said there are also likely industry-wide factors at play.

“Sales of electric vehicles have been slowing. They have been slowing from a very rapid pace over the past few years. There have also been price cuts in the industry,” he said. “Tesla’s just recently reported their first-quarter deliveries. They were down year-over-year; they declined for the first time in about four years.

“Their margins are under pressure. They also are under pressure to come out with new models. So, I mean, there are clearly some struggles in the industry that Tesla is having to deal with.”

That being said, Sechler said the EV market isn’t going anywhere.

“Tesla is a leader in EV sales, and obviously it’s a sign that EV sales are slowing,” he said. “I think we have to put it in context that this was a very-fast growing segment of the car industry, and I believe it is still growing overall; it’s just not growing as fast. So that’s a big difference. It’s not that no one’s buying EVs or something. I still think people are buying EVs. And I think that will continue.”

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Tesla has more than 140,000 employees worldwide and about 20,000 in the Austin area.

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AUSTIN, Texas — One of Travis County's largest employers, Tesla, plans to lay off 10% of its global workforce to cut costs.

The news from CEO Elon Musk was delivered to staff in an email Monday morning, according to the New York Times.

Impacts from the news are already being felt in the Austin area, where Tesla's Gigafactory employs about 20,000 people.

Ezkel Love said working there was like the American dream coming true for him.

“I got an email saying I was terminated, and they made a decision to let go 10% of the workforce," Love said. “They’re supposed to be leading in innovation ... That would have been the best opportunity for me to learn manufacturing.”

Love said he was hired a month ago to assemble the Tesla Model Y cars at the plant near Del Valle. Love's termination letter said Tesla is reducing the number of staff at the Austin factory, but an email from Musk to employees said layoffs will be global. The letter states Tesla is getting rid of overfilled jobs due to the company's massive growth.

RELATED: Report: Tesla laying off thousands of employees worldwide, cutting hours for some Austin employees

“No warning at all. I don’t have a job ... Can’t pay my rent. So, I’ve got to find something else to do to make ends meet,” Love said.

While Love said he was blindsided, Electrek Editor-in-Chief Fred Lambert said the publication had heard rumblings about the news for months.

“Since December," Lambert said. "More January and February, where Tesla delayed a lot of performance reviews and reduced some salary bonds and took away some stock options ... A lot of things that lead to layoffs.

Tesla claims the layoffs may be due to over-hiring, but Lambert said there could be more reasons behind them, like the company's performance last quarter. While Lambert said electric vehicle sales are still good worldwide, Tesla had a bad first quarter this year.

“There has to be a few tens of thousands of vehicles that should have been sold and haven't been sold. That's worrying for Tesla investors,” Lambert said.

RELATED: Tesla sales tumble nearly 9%, most in 4 years, as competition heats up and demand for EVs slows

According to Lambert, production for Tesla's next-generation electric cars, meant to be affordable, has been delayed because of the Cybertruck. That means no meaningful growth is happening and the layoffs could be compensating for a loss of money.

“Tesla might lose money for the first time in years," Lambert said. "Now they want to make sure that doesn't happen in Q2 if they have a similar performance in terms of vehicle deliveries."

While Lambert said Tesla is still growing and hiring people, employees like Love are being left behind.

“They should give us a heads up about how things are going on with the companies instead of hiring a bunch of people and then letting them go,” Love said.

Love said he hasn't been able to contact human resources for a clearer answer to what happened. He also said the move will affect those with children and others who travel from far away to work at Giga Texas.

KVUE reached out to Tesla for comment but did not hear back.

Boomtown is KVUE's series covering the explosive growth in Central Texas. For more Boomtown stories, head to KVUE.com/Boomtown

Approximately 14,000 jobs are on the line, but it's unclear how many of the layoffs will be in Austin.

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AUSTIN, Texas — Editor's note: The above video was published on April 8.

Tesla is reportedly laying off 10% of its global workforce and cutting hours for Cybertruck employees at its Austin gigafactory.

Both Reuters and tech publication Electrek reported Monday morning that Tesla is cutting 10% of its workforce worldwide, both citing a companywide email sent by CEO Elon Musk.

According to the Reuters report, some staff in Texas and California have already been notified of layoffs, though it's unclear right now how or if the cuts will impact Tesla's operations in Central Texas.

Tesla had 140,473 employees globally as of December 2023, and while the memo from Musk didn't say how many jobs will be impacted by these planned cuts, 10% of the workforce would equate to roughly 14,000 employees.

Electrek's report includes the full text of Musk's memo, in which the CEO said the layoffs are necessary to eliminate "duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas" that he said are a byproduct of Tesla's rapid growth.

"There is nothing I hate more, but it must be done," Musk wrote of the layoffs. "This will enable us to be lean, innovative and hungry for the next growth phase cycle."

RELATED: Tesla sales tumble nearly 9%, most in 4 years, as competition heats up and demand for EVs slows

Meanwhile, over the weekend Business Insider reported that Tesla has sent an internal message to Austin employees who work on the Cybertrucks, informing them their production line shifts will now be shorter.

Business Insider reported that previously, Cybertruck workers clocked 12-hour long shifts, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Now, according to the memo, they will be working 11-hour shifts during the day and 10.5-hour shifts at night, from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 4:30 a.m.

These memos come after Tesla reported a dip in first-quarter delivery sales and the first year-over-year quarterly sales decline in nearly four years. The news also comes about a week after Tesla reported to Travis County that it finished 2023 with nearly 23,000 workers at the gigafactory, making it the largest private employer in the Austin area.

Boomtown is KVUE's series covering the explosive growth in Central Texas. For more Boomtown stories, head to KVUE.com/Boomtown.

Hundreds of lawsuits have already been filed, and experts predict thousands of pools are impacted.

AUSTIN, Texas — The KVUE Defenders have discovered a hidden defect in possibly thousands of pools built in Central Texas in 2017 and later. It's called "concrete cancer," and it's costing families their backyard dreams and builders their entire businesses.

For AJ Miller and his wife, Debra Miller, their dream backyard has turned into a nightmare.

"We always wanted to put a pool in, you know. We were looking at houses that had pools prior to buying this house," AJ Miller said. "It just wasn't in our budget at the time."

After seven years in their Austin home, the Millers were finally able to create their backyard oasis for their family of four in 2020.

"We had people over all the time," AJ Miller said. "I mean, it was like my heaven, you know? I'm an entertainer at heart, so I built a sick sound system. There are speakers there, there, there, over there, I mean, everywhere. And they'll all have to get dug up."

The speakers have to be dug up and removed because the Millers' heaven has become a hell of a problem.

"It's practically cracks in every single part of it," AJ Miller said, showing KVUE the cracks in his family's pool.

Now the Millers are suing their pool builder, Premier Pools and Spa, and Hot Crete, the concrete subcontractor, for "negligence" and "breach of contract for defective work."

"This was the first crack we saw in the foundation right here," AJ Miller said, pointing to the back wall of the pool.

According to the lawsuit, the pool cost $115,000, and within a month of completion, the Millers noticed "cracking, distress, and leaking in the walls of the pool."

The Millers said they were initially told it was a cosmetic issue, and Premier Pools and Spas attempted to fix it. AJ Miller said the back wall of the pool was repaired – but within six months, it all cracked again.

"We were worried that this whole thing was going to fall and all the pool water was going to go into our neighbors' [yards]," AJ Miller said. "After that kind of took place is when the radio silence happened, and we couldn't get an answer from anyone."

The Millers said calcium built up around the cracks in their pool and parts of the pool began to leak, flood and detach from their patio.

"It's all separating itself from the pool, going through the looter all the way to the house," AJ Miller said. "That's when I started to freak out."

Debra Miller said the pool was losing water so fast that they eventually drained it before it drained them.

"I don't think that we even realized how much water we were losing until the bill," Debra Miller said. "It just didn't make any sense."

The couple said months later, the builder eventually told them their pool has "Alkali Silica Reaction," or ASR, also known as "concrete cancer."

PHOTOS: ASR on the Millers' pool

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KVUE

ASR on the Miller's pool.

Experts say it was unheard of in Central Texas until recent years.

"I think there was a mix of emotions," Debra Miller said. "There was tons of uncertainty and confusion."

"You know, you're angry, then you're sad, and then you're mad again," AJ Miller said.

The KVUE Defenders reached out to Premier Pools and Spas and Hot Crete for comment. A representative for Premier responded by email, saying it didn't build the Millers' pool, but:

"The ASR (concrete cancer) issue is such an unfortunate situation for homeowners and builders in the Austin area. We feel for all homeowners and business owners that are feeling the effects. Homeowners are having to deal with failing concrete, leaks and water loss. Builders paid for a product that was supposed to be warrantied for a lifetime and be defective-free, and now, when that is called into question, insurance companies are not taking responsibility. Everyone in the industry wants to get to the bottom of what is causing the problem and who is responsible."

Hot Crete did not return the KVUE Defenders' calls, but in its answer to the Millers' lawsuit, it denied any wrongdoing.

Experts say ASR happens when concrete isn't mixed correctly and lacks a material called "fly ash." Water actually makes the concrete expand and crack and, in most cases, the only way to fix it is to demolish an impacted pool and completely rebuild – at double, even triple, the original cost of construction.

"This is not just affecting pool owners," attorney Michael Williams said. "Most of these pool builders do not pour their own concrete. They hire subs to do the concrete."

Williams represents clients on all sides of this issue, both pool customers and contractors.

"It's a really strange thing, and I don't know that we know yet how it came to be," Williams said.

Pool builders like Bo Barnett said the "concrete cancer" has been found in pools built between 2017 and 2023. During that time, Barnett, like many other pool builders, saw a boom in customers, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Three years ago, there were 90% of Central Texas builders that had no idea of what this was," Barnett said.

Barnett was among them – until he found out the hard way.

His company, KB Custom Pools, has been around for nearly two decades. It's won almost more top builder awards than his office can hold.

"So, this pool right here won an award," said Barnett, pointing to the awards and pictures on his office walls. "It was affected. This pool has been affected here. We've got three others behind you."

Now those awards are reminders of how prevalent ASR has become.

"We lost the confidence of our clients because we did two or three repairs and all of them failed," Barnett said.

Barnett said it's been expensive trying to make things right. He said KB Custom Pools is facing nearly two dozen lawsuits without help from insurance companies and has had to file for bankruptcy.

"The fear of losing my ability to provide for my family has been the biggest problem," Barnett said. "That, and seeing the heartache that this phenomenon has caused my clients. It's been almost equally devastating."

The KVUE Defenders found hundreds of lawsuits filed against pool construction companies and concrete contractors in Central Texas.

Barnett and Williams believe there are potentially thousands of affected pools.

"I think that what's going on right now is the tip of the iceberg," William said. "I think that it could be 10 times bigger."

That's why both the Millers and Barnett said they are using their experiences to help others.

"This is the most stress I've experienced in my entire life, through anything I've ever been through," Barnett said. "That's why I'm so motivated to be a part of the solution."

Barnett is rolling his pool construction business into his design and consulting business, GB4 Designs, to educate builders, clients and the public.

The Millers have a podcast called "AJ Miller Time" and a Facebook group dedicated to educating and helping impacted pool owners.

"It's just kind of like feels good to help people somehow, even though there's nothing in it for you, you know, other than just you don't want someone to go through the same crap you're going through," AJ Miller said.

He said he's looking for the bright spots and enjoying his backyard the best way he can until he can restore his oasis.

Pool construction experts said the only way to confirm whether a pool has "concrete cancer" is to pay for a core sample to be removed from the pool and analyzed by a lab, which can cost thousands of dollars and take weeks.

Also, if you plan on hiring a pool builder, make sure the concrete contractor can prove they’re using the right concrete mix.

And if you plan on buying a home with a pool and the pool was built in 2017 or later, look for signs of “concrete cancer,” such as cracking, white build-up around the cracks and separation from stairs and pool decking. If no signs exist, find out who built the pool and which concrete contractor the builder used. You can check with those companies and look for lawsuits against them filed in your county.

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