Healthcare industry

Mayo Clinic will return to the taxable market for the second time in six months as low rates coupled with freedom from tax-exempt compliance issues are proving too good of an incentive to resist.

Standard & Poor's lowered by three notches its long-term rating on bonds issued for Good Samaritan Hospital of Lebanon, Pa., to B-plus from BB-plus.

Moody's Investors Service Wednesday downgraded to A2 from Aa3 a Washington hospital's limited tax general obligation bonds affecting $223.9 million in debt.

Fitch Ratings has revised its outlook to negative from stable on the A-minus rating held by Bethesda Health Group due to the balance sheet strains from low occupancy levels and flat revenue growth which heightens concerns over its aggressive debt profile.

SUNY Downstate Medical Center is planning to close one of its three hospitals in Brooklyn to deal with the center's financial problems.

Chicago has struck a tentative collective bargaining agreement with one of its smaller unions that includes pension benefit and retiree healthcare reforms that Mayor Rahm Emanuel characterized Tuesday as a possible roadmap to help solve the city's pension crisis.

Moody's Investors Service last week downgraded its underlying rating to Baa1 from A2 on Northeast Ohio Medical University.

Moody's Investors Service said it downgraded $20 billion of non-profit health care debt last year, a 213% jump from 2011 and the most since the ratings agency starting tracking the number in 1995.

Minnesota hospitals provided $509 million in uncompensated care in 2011, up from $496 million a year earlier, according to the Minnesota Hospital Association's annual community benefits report.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy's two-year, $21.5 billion budget includes $1.8 billion worth of capital funds and a bioscience initiative for UConn.

Moody's revised its outlook for West Penn Allegheny Health System bonds to developing from negative as it monitors an affiliation agreement with Highmark.

Fitch Ratings has placed Springfield, Mo,-based CoxHealth's A rating on Rating Watch Negative due to the system's impending new debt issuance.

Fitch Ratings downgraded Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare, Ill. – which is preparing to merge with the higher rated Edward Hospital and Health Services -- one notch to BBB due to its weak operating performance.

Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic hopes to land $500 million of state bonding help over the next two decades to support a proposed $5 billion capital improvement and economic development plan that aims to both improve its own facilities and remake its home city.

Joan Marron has taken over as executive director and head of Morgan Stanley's health care group after former co-head David Ertel left for another job.

Yale-New Haven Hospital is scheduled to come to market Thursday with a $232 million sale of revenue bonds in three series. Barclays is lead manager.

Standard & Poor's has revised its outlook on St. Louis-based St. Anthony's Medical Center's A-plus rating to negative from stable due to operating losses.

Fitch Ratings last week upgraded to BBB from BBB-minus its rating on The Methodist Hospitals, reflecting the northwest Indiana system's improving financial performance.

Amid major changes in health-care finance, Phoenix Children's Hospital will refund $284.6 million of revenue bonds used to build an 11-story tower.

The large scale changes sweeping the nonprofit health care sector, chief among them changes in payment methods, are driving the record-setting consolidation trend among hospitals, Fitch Ratings says.