In 2018, HCA Healthcare reported an increase in overall revenue, which hit $46.6 billion, and outpatient surgery case volume increased 1.8 percent year over year.
Five key quotes from the HCA Healthcare earnings call, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha:
Sam Hazen on outpatient strategy: “The second component of our spending is around building our network in our outpatient capabilities so that we are very convenient and easy to access. So we’ve added surgery centers; we’ve added three standing emergency rooms, urgent care centers, clinics and other diagnostic capabilities to really support a comprehensive opportunity for patients to access an HCA Healthcare system.”
Bill Rutherford on payer mix: “We expect to see continued growth in equity and good payer mix. So I think this year we are helped by the strong commercial volume, continued growth equity and that’s led us to be a little bit above our 2 percent to 3 percent kind of expectations [in same-facility revenue per admit]. We will see what 2019 has but we don’t really see any major changes going [on] in the payer environment.”
SH on hospital strategy: “We had almost 80 percent of our hospitals grow their EBITDA year over year. Seventy percent of our hospitals grew their admission year over year. Sixty-five percent of our hospitals grew their outpatient strategy year over year. This is an incredible portfolio performance and I think it speaks again to the clarity of our approach in the marketplaces.”
SH on overall acquisitions: “We have and will continue to pursue outpatient acquisitions. We’ve recently made a large ambulatory surgery center acquisition in Austin, Texas. We have other markets where we are looking at acquisition of ambulatory surgery centers.”
SH on physician practice acquisition: “We continue to use acquisitions of our physicians group as a way to add to our capabilities. Whether it’s with more convenient offerings for our patients or for strategic reasons to support certain service line or facility need[s]…we don’t talk about those in any significant way because they are small individually but they add up to support for our overall network positioning.”
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