A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

OnCure Medical (Newport Beach, California), a provider of outpatient radiation therapy services, reported that it has amended its senior secured credit facility with Merrill Lynch Capital and added a subordinated credit facility with MCG Capital and Ares Capital for a total of $125 million.

The proceeds were used to refinance OnCure's debt, acquire the outstanding stock of Coastal Radiation Oncology Medical Group (Coastal; Santa Maria, California), and provide capital for additional acquisitions and working capital.

"OnCure now has the foundation for a commitment for capital with these relationships to execute its strategy for growth and for additional potential acquisitions," said Richard Zehner, OnCure CEO.

Coastal owns eight centers in California in the cities of Salinas, San Luis Obispo, Santa Maria, Templeton, Ventura, Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village and Simi Valley.

Dr. Shyam Paryani, chairman of the OnCure board, said, "This brings together two leading radiation oncology companies with similar clinical standards of excellence."

"With the addition of these centers to our existing network, OnCure is now the largest freestanding provider of radiation therapy services in the state of California, and it ensures our continued commitment to expand our regional networks of radiation centers in association with quality doctors," said Jeffrey Goffman, president and founder of OnCure.

OnCure owns, operates and manages 28 radiation centers, and other mobile HDR and positron emission tomography/computed tomography units, all in California and Florida. Its centers provide treatment areas and equipment for radiation therapy and diagnostic radiology, including intensity-modulated radiation therapy, computed tomography and positron emission tomography.

OnCure's shareholders include Crossbow Ventures, Halpern Denny & Co. and MedEquity Capital.

Ophthalmic Imaging Systems (OIS; Sacramento, California), a provider of ophthalmic digital imaging systems, reported that MediVision Medical Imaging (Yok-neam, Israel), its major shareholder, sold 1 million shares of OIS's common stock to Wasatch Advisors (Milwaukee) for $1.80 a share. As a result, public float increases to around 6.7 million shares.

Gil Allon, CEO of OIS, said, "This is MediVision's fifth transaction of this nature over the past year and a half, totaling 2.76 million OIS shares sold to institutional investors. These transactions have increased the company's liquidity without diluting existing shareholders, and have resulted in a growing awareness of OIS within the investment community."

In other financing news:

• Fonar (Melville, New York) reported that its chairman, president and founder, Raymond Damadian, MD, purchased 100,000 shares of company stock in the open market on Feb. 13. This brings his total ownership to 2,588,274 shares of common stock.

Damadian has not sold a share in more than a decade, the company noted.

In addition to Damadian, Robert Janoff purchased 10,000 shares of Fonar stock in the open market on Feb. 10. Janoff is a non-executive and independent member of Fonar's board of directors, and the purchases were made pursuant to the company's corporate governance guidelines for insider stock purchases, it said.

Fonar, which was incorporated in 1978, introduced the world's first commercial MRI system in 1980 and went public in 1981.

• HealthSouth (Birmingham) reported that it has received the necessary consents of the holders of a series of notes to the proposed amendments to the applicable indenture governing each series of the notes. HealthSouth said it promptly executed supplemental indentures implementing the proposed amendments, but such supplemental indentures will not become operative until and unless it accepts for purchase all of the notes tendered in the related tender offers.

The tender offers are scheduled to expire at midnight, EST, March 2, unless extended or earlier terminated.

HealthSouth is a provider of outpatient surgery, diagnostic imaging and rehabilitative healthcare services.