Healthcare industry

BRADENTON, Fla. - A Tampa-based real estate broker specializing in the sale of senior housing communities has a new niche: the sale of distressed senior housing financed with tax-exempt bonds.

Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor’s last week downgraded their long-term ratings on BRCH Corp. Obligated Group, an acute-care hospital with 400 licensed beds in Boca Raton.

CHICAGO - The Illinois Finance Authority board yesterday advanced borrowing plans totaling $500 million for health care facilities in the state, including up to $350 million for Northwest Community Hospital to finance a new patient tower and other projects and to refund existing debt.

Standard & Poor’s last week revised the outlook to stable from negative on Morris Hospital and Healthcare Centers’ BBB-plus rating on $11 million of debt.

DALLAS - Integris Health will reduce its level of variable-rate demand debt with next week's negotiated sale of $222.7 million of fixed-rate hospital system revenue and refunding bonds by Oklahoma Development Finance Authority.

CHICAGO - Fitch Ratings last week placed West Bend, Wis.-based SynergyHealthInc.'s BBB-minus credit on rating watch for an upgrade in recognition of its newly minted affiliation with the stronger-rated Froedtert & Community HealthInc. system, based in Wauwatosa.

The New York Department of Health last week announced that it has amended the operating certificates of 18 health care facilities for failing to comply with the mandates of the Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century.

DALLAS - A revised business plan for a proposed new medical center in New Orleans supports construction of the $1.2 billion facility, but indicates that the Louisiana Legislature will have to provide financial support to the bond-financed project.

CHICAGO - Joliet, Ill.-based Silver Cross Hospital and Medical Centerwon state regulatory approval this week to build a nearly $400 million replacement hospital a few miles from its current location while consideration of Edward Hospital's proposed new facility was again postponed by the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board.

CHICAGO - The Illinois International Port District should be dissolved and its operations handed over to Chicago because it has failed to promote maritime commerce and shipping activities and instead is focused on operating a golf course, the Civic Federation of Chicago urged in a report this week.

CHICAGO - Merrill Lynch & Co. has scooped up nearly 30 public finance bankers from the ranks of the now-shuttered municipal group at UBS Securities LLC - taking advantage of a "once-in-a-decade opportunity" as its Wall Street neighbors shed staff to cope with subprime market-related losses, the firm's municipal chairman said.

DALLAS - RBC Capital Markets continued its efforts to increase the size and scope of its municipal finance health care group yesterday by bringing on board seven former Bear, Stearns & Co. bankers in that sector.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm in a surprise move last week vetoed a recent rule change approved by the state’s Certificate Of Need Commission that would have required hospitals to form a consortium to build a state-of-the-art new cancer treatment center.

DALLAS — A year after completing its move to the former Fitzsimons Army Hospital campus in Aurora, Colo., the University of Colorado Hospital Authority will issue $92.6 million of variable-rate revenue bonds for construction and refunding.

CHICAGO — Standard & Poor's yesterday placed the A-plus underlying credit of Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Credit Watch with negative implications as the shuttered hospital struggles to recover from the devastating floods that have hit the Midwest.

SAN FRANCISCO The federal receiver charged with bringing California's prison health care system up to constitutional muster turned up the heat on state decision makers this week.

The Hoboken Municipal Hospital Authority will refinance up to $12 million of tax-exempt debt into taxable bonds within the next two weeks to help cover operating expenses at the Hoboken University Medical Center in New Jersey.

CHICAGO — A Michigan-based hospital system today will begin converting $125 million in auction-rate debt into a variable-rate mode, while next week Ohio's Lake Hospital System will price nearly $190 million of variable- and fixed-rate revenue bonds, in a pair of transactions that will allow the systems to exit the troubled auction-rate market.

CHICAGO The Illinois Finance Authority this week advanced borrowing plans for a handful of nonprofits including $125 million for Northwestern University, which is undertaking nearly $1 billion in campus improvements, and $180 million for Advocate Health Care Network to finance its acquisition of Condell Health Network.

CHICAGO South Dakota-based regional health care provider Avera Health plans to enter the market tomorrow to sell $140 million of variable-rate demand bonds, one of three transactions that will replace all of its auction-rate securities.