For those looking to find strong Medical stocks, it is prudent to search for companies in the group that are outperforming their peers. Has Anthem been one of those stocks this year? Let's take a closer look at the stock's year-to-date performance to find out.

Anthem is one of 870 companies in the Medical group. The Medical group currently sits at #2 within the Zacks Sector Rank. The Zacks Sector Rank includes 16 different groups and is listed in order from best to worst in terms of the average Zacks Rank of the individual companies within each of these sectors.

The Zacks Rank emphasizes earnings estimates and estimate revisions to find stocks with improving earnings outlooks. This system has a long record of success, and these stocks tend to be on track to beat the market over the next one to three months. ANTM is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).

Over the past three months, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for ANTM's full-year earnings has moved 0.71% higher. This means that analyst sentiment is stronger and the stock's earnings outlook is improving.

Our latest available data shows that ANTM has returned about 9.63% since the start of the calendar year. Meanwhile, the Medical sector has returned an average of 6.58% on a year-to-date basis. This means that Anthem is performing better than its sector in terms of year-to-date returns.

To break things down more, ANTM belongs to the Medical - HMOs industry, a group that includes 11 individual companies and currently sits at #8 in the Zacks Industry Rank. Stocks in this group have gained about 1.29% so far this year, so ANTM is performing better this group in terms of year-to-date returns.

Going forward, investors interested in Medical stocks should continue to pay close attention to ANTM as it looks to continue its solid performance.