Healthcare industry

CHICAGO - After years of near financial collapse, Detroit's largest safety-net hospital is enjoying its fourth straight year of operating profitability and now hopes to enter the bond market for the first time in a decade to generate proceeds that would continue to bolster that performance.

Fitch Ratings assigned a negative watch to the outstanding debt issued through the Indiana Health Facilities Financing Authority on behalf of retirement facility Marquette Manor.

CHICAGO - The Civic Federation of Chicago, a local, business-funded government watchdog group, is launching a new institute with a multi-year grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation aimed at highlighting Illinois' fiscal health and influencing policy decisions.

CHICAGO - Chicago-based Ziegler Capital Markets is seizing on business opportunities arising from the turmoil at Wall Street's investment banks, adding 17 professionals to its tax-exempt staff and pursuing business with larger hospitals that might feel neglected by their Wall Street bankers.

CHICAGO - Despite remaining largely insulated from the turmoil in the capital markets so far, the years-long strong operating performance across the nonprofit health care sector could be headed for a decline in 2009, particularly among smaller, lower-rated credits, Fitch Ratings analysts said in a report on median ratios on the industry released yesterday.

CHICAGO - Wisconsin's largest local governments face a collective $6 billion unfunded liability for retiree health care benefits, with Milwaukee-area governments and school districts representing about $4.5 billion of the total, according to a new study from a local government policy watchdog group.

The Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board last week approved a second proton therapy center to treat cancer in the Chicago area, despite concerns that the region can’t support two centers.

Dallas County Judge Jim Foster is leading the campaign for a $747 million bond issue that would finance the replacement of the existing Parkland Hospital.

Michigan’s nonprofit hospitals spent a record-setting $2.6 billion in community benefits in 2007, according to an annual report out this week from the Michigan Health & Hospital Association.

Two rating agencies changed their outlooks for St. Anthony’s Medical Center in conjunction with their release of updated credit reviews.

Voters in Hot Spring County and Chicot County last week approved increases in local sales taxes to help finance operations at hospitals in Malvern and Lake Village, respectively.

CHICAGO - William Beaumont Hospital plans to enter the market this week with $584 million of new-money and refunding revenue bonds, the first of three issues over the next several months.

ATLANTA - Hospital systems throughout the country are trying to unload their auction-rate securities, and next week the Cape Fear Valley Health Center in North Carolina will join them.

CHICAGO - More than $1.7 billion of borrowing is planned in the coming months by health care providers under a series of financings advanced this week by the Illinois Finance Authority board.

CHICAGO - Provena Health by the end of the month will petition the Illinois Supreme Court to review an appellate court opinion stripping one of the Mokena, Ill.-based system's hospitals of its property tax exemption.

CHICAGO - The Illinois Finance Authority board yesterday approved the University of Chicago Medical Center's plan to restructure $185 million of insured variable-rate debt in a unanimous vote, which came after several protestors voiced complaints charging that the hospital discriminates against the area's poor African-Americans.

CHICAGO - CoxHealth of Springfield, Mo., enters the market today with the first piece of a new-money and refunding transaction for $265 million that will finance a series of expansion projects and restructure outstanding insured floating-rate bonds hit with higher rates due to insurer downgrades.

CHICAGO - The Cleveland Clinic Health System today enters the market with $375 million in fixed-rate revenue bonds, the first in a series of issues totaling $1.1 billion over the next few weeks.

CHICAGO - Investors holding $38 million of bonds issued on behalf of a Michigan hospital will likely end up receiving just $3.2 million under a deal announced last week allowing the cash-strapped facility to enter bankruptcy before being purchased by a for-profit group of physicians.

CHICAGO - The University of Chicago Medical Center said yesterday it was "proud" of its charitable care record after receiving a questionnaire on its practices from the U.S. Senate's leading proponent of heightened congressional oversight of nonprofit hospitals and whether they warrant the perks of their tax-exempt status.