The long-term rating upgrade on Salt Lake City and Weber County, Utah's bonds, issued for IHC Health Services Inc., reflects: The excellent, stable, and deep management team's proven ability to build upon the system's strengths and prudently shepherd the system's resources; An impressive market position with dominance of a large, economically robust area, including Utah and southern Idaho; A long-standing history of healthy and improving operating and excess profitability that has always met or exceeded management projections, despite pressures that have depressed performance for many other health systems; Tremendous operating and pricing flexibility, as a result of the system's dominant market position and low cost structure; A solid balance sheet that shows management's steady development of liquidity, measured use of
