Moody's Investors Service has revised the outlook for the U.S. nonprofit and public healthcare sector to stable from negative.
The outlook on the sector had been negative since 2008, and Moody's cited a number of factors that caused the outlook to be upgraded.
"The outlook revision represents significant gains in the number of people with insurance, growing patient volumes, and sizeable reductions in bad debt that are contributing to very strong growth in operating cash flow," said Daniel Steingart, vice president and senior analyst at Moody's.
The outlook change expresses Moody's views for the sector will neither erode nor significantly improve in the next 12 to 18 months. However, Moody's did note that there are long-term pressures on the sector.
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