Healthcare industry

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.

Two hospitals in Chicago's western suburbs — Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare and Edward Hospital & Health Services — are the latest to merge, joining the two-year-old surge nationally of not-for-profit healthcare consolidation.

The $3 billion of bonding authority of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas would be stripped, except for refundings, by a measure proposed by state lawmaker.

SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn faces insolvency as soon as May, said New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

Moody's says the West Penn Allegheny debt restructuring features "close parallels" to the bankruptcy of the teetering health system's predecessor 15 years ago.

New York public health system Nassau Health Care Corp. captured an interest rate of 0.4% and saw broad investor interest Tuesday when it sold $40 million of insured revenue anticipation notes backed by future Medicaid payments.

Officials from Highmark and West Penn Allegheny Health System announced an agreement with West Penn bondholders to accept a haircut on their holdings, avoiding a potential bankruptcy and allowing an affiliation agreement to proceed.

A long-awaited review of the state of Chicago's retiree healthcare system concludes that the cash-strapped city can't afford to keep subsidizing its other post-employment benefits at existing levels.

Standard & Poor's has upgraded Meridian Health System debt issued by New Jersey Health Care Facilities Financing Authority to A from A-minus.

West Penn Allegheny Health System, bondholders and Highmark are continuing talks about a $475 million affiliation agreement, with West Penn possibly avoiding bankruptcy.

The Illinois Finance Authority board advanced new-money and refunding deals planned by Northwestern Memorial Healthcare and the Franciscan Communities Inc. in the coming months.

The impact of Hurricane Sandy on the New York City public hospital system will exceed $800 million, according to Health and Hospitals President Alan Aviles.