Acute-care hospital operator Community Health Systems Inc. has underperformed our expectations over the last two quarters, resulting in higher leverage and weaker cash flow relative to our prior expectations. In addition, the company's recently announced share repurchase program creates some uncertainty around the company's commitment to reducing leverage. We are revising our rating outlook on Community to negative from stable and affirming our 'B+' corporate credit rating. Our issue-level ratings on Community's debt are unchanged. The negative rating outlook reflects our view that the company's current operating challenges may take some time to resolve, and financial policies may be somewhat more aggressive than we previously anticipated. This gives us less confidence that Community will be able to reduce leverage to
