Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Pediatrix Medical Group Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, your telephone lines are on a listen-only mode. Later, there will be an opportunity for questions and answers. If you would like to ask a question, please press one then zero on your telephone keypad. You'll hear an indication that you've been placed into the queue, and you may remove yourself from that queue by repeating the one then zero command. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset and make certain your phone is unmuted before pressing those buttons. As a reminder, your call today is being recorded. I'll now turn the conference call over to your host, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Finance, Charles Lynch. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. I will quickly read through our forward-looking statements and then turn the call over to our speakers. Certain statements and information during this conference call may be deemed to be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and assessments made by Pediatrix's management in light of their experience and assessment of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments, and other factors they believe to be appropriate. Any forward-looking statements made during this call are made as of today, and Pediatrix undertakes no duty to update or revise any such statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.
Important factors that could cause actual results, developments, and business decisions to differ materially from forward-looking statements are described in the company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K, its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and its current reports on Form 8-K, including the sections entitled Risk Factors. In today's remarks by management, we will be discussing non-GAAP financial metrics. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures can be found in this morning's earnings press release, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and our annual report on Form 10-K, and on our website at www.pediatrix.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Mark Ordan.
Thanks, Charles, and good morning, everyone. Also with me today are Dr. Jim Swift, our Chief Operating Officer, and Marc Richards, our Chief Financial Officer. We're of course disappointed by our third quarter results. Compared to our internal forecast, revenue was off by approximately $22 million and adjusted EBITDA missed by approximately $19 million. Roughly half of this variance reflects muted operating results from a handful of factors, primarily related to neonatology volume and payer mix. However, the largest component of the miss was directly from our outsourced billing and collection processes, which unfavorably impacted revenue and adjusted EBITDA by approximately $11 million and $9 million, respectively. Our actual cash generation was strong in the quarter and allowed us to pay down $60 million in debt and reduce our already conservative leverage ratio to 2.9 times.
We are very pleased in this turbulent environment to have such a strong balance sheet, strong liquidity, and very low borrowing costs. As we discussed last quarter, the challenges we were experiencing with our revenue cycle transition to R1 were lessening, with collections activities accelerating, particularly in June, and the unfavorable impact to our second quarter results was about half of what we experienced in the first quarter. We believed that performance and results would continue to improve in the second half of the year, and our previously updated outlook for 2022 reflected this expectation. However, during the third quarter of 2022, as compared to the same period in the prior year, we saw an increased shortfall in billings and collections, such that the impact to our top line was more than twice the $5 million we reported for the second quarter.
This impact comes in the form of increased allowances against our receivables, which flows through our income statement as lower reported revenue and which you can see in our earnings release as part of our pricing discussion. I wanna be very clear that this negative impact is only about billing and collections and has nothing to do with payer behavior from the No Surprises Act. In total, our revenue cycle management transition has proved to be much more costly than we anticipated. Through the first nine months of this year, we estimate that this transition has negatively impacted our revenue by $25 million-$30 million and our adjusted EBITDA by $15 million-$17 million versus our initial outlook on our February call. To be clear, of course, we've had offsetting savings in our G&A from our shift to a third-party provider, as was contemplated in that initial outlook.
We have and are taking aggressive steps to address these revenue cycle challenges. We have undertaken a thorough review of our outsourced revenue cycle activities in direct coordination with our practices to determine precisely where weaknesses exist in the current outsource function. Due to the unique nature of our business, we are meaningfully expanding our in-house team with subject matter expertise very specific to the services we provide. We've worked with R1 to identify priority areas for this expansion and with R1's financial support, we have already started adding a sizable, regionally positioned, dedicated team.
Separate from the RCM steps I just detailed, we have completed a reduction in our overhead expenses at the corporate level, which we estimate will reduce our annual G&A expense by approximately $12-$14 million beginning here in the fourth quarter. Based on our results through September 30 and our expectation for the fourth quarter, we have updated our outlook of adjusted EBITDA for 2022 to a range of $240-$245 million. You'll see that at the midpoint, this implies a significant sequential improvement in adjusted EBITDA versus the third quarter, which reflects our current expectations of both revenue and costs based on the steps we have taken and are taking, including the support provided by R1 and their impact on our fourth quarter results.
Turning to the No Surprises Act, there has not been any significant activity on the part of the various administrative departments since they published their final rule in August. On payer behavior, we continue to be overwhelmingly in-network. We have heard more references to the final rule, and we've had payers discuss qualifying payment amounts, which, by their own admission, compare specialists with generalists who don't even provide the same services. Since this miscalculation of the QPA was specifically pointed to in the August ruling, we will vigorously protect Pediatrix from any intentional under-calculating of this number. My conversations with payers inform me that they are aware that the government is onto this mistake. In the instances where we're out of network, we have completed a number of arbitrations over the past months, and so far, our results have been in our favor over 75% of the time.
I'll now turn the call over to Dr. Jim Swift to discuss our core operating measures.
Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. I'll focus my comments today on our underlying operating results in terms of volume, mix, and costs. As Mark noted, volume and mix represented about half of the variance from our internal expectations in roughly equal magnitude. As we reported this morning, our same-store volume growth was modest. All of our office-based service lines generated same-store growth in the quarter, but hospital-based volumes declined by 60 basis points. The primary driver here was neonatology, with NICU days declining by 1.4% based largely on modestly lower same-store births. On mix, our breakdown of government versus non-government volumes remains within our historically normal range, but the 120 basis point shift towards government payers this quarter, which is comparable to the shift we reported in the second quarter, this nonetheless represented a headwind to revenue and EBITDA.
On clinical labor, our salary costs were roughly $3 million above our forecast, which is similar to the upside variance we experienced in the second quarter. To give some more detail on this, I'll point out a couple of items. First, this overrun related largely to certain geographies and in subspecialty services where we have experienced a fair amount of demand-driven organic growth with our hospital partners. In these cases, the costs are related to open positions that we are actively working to fill and stand up new practices as opposed to any underlying salary trends at our existing practices in our core services. This modest variance in clinical costs was offset by similarly modest positive variances elsewhere, resulting in no corresponding impact to adjusted EBITDA in the quarter.
Lastly, as Mark mentioned, the additional non-clinical cost reductions that we have implemented do not impact the delivery of patient care or our focus on research and quality at the bedside. I also wanna briefly address the concerns that many of you have probably seen in the press about the concurrence of influenza, COVID, and RSV cases as we move into the winter months. Related to our third quarter results, we did experience an uptick in volumes with our pediatric ICUs and peds hospital programs late in the quarter, but not with any materiality to our overall results.
Our attention and focus entering the winter will be working with our hospital partners to ensure that our clinicians have the support to handle any expected rise in volumes as best as possible, given what could likely be constraints on both bed availability and potential hospital labor capacity in the inpatient setting. Related to our pediatric primary and urgent care clinic strategy, I'll highlight last month we officially opened our first de novo fully branded Pediatrix clinic in the Houston market. This primary and urgent care clinic is off to a great early start thanks to an amazing team. We remain on track for goals we detailed last quarter, which include a total of 40-50 clinics across 8-10 markets in 6 states by the end of 2023.
I'll conclude by acknowledging the very challenging environment our clinicians must work through after two years of the ravages of COVID and the consequences that have unfolded. Their dedication is amazing and saves lives every day of the year. With that, I'll turn it over to Marc Richards.
Thanks, Jim, and good morning, everyone. I'll comment briefly today on two selected financial items in the third quarter. First, related to our balance sheet, you'll see in our 10-Q file this morning that our net accounts receivable and DSOs declined sequentially versus the second quarter to $294 million and 55 days, respectively. This is predominantly related to an increase in our allowance for contractual adjustments and uncollectibles based on RCM activity during the quarter, which in turn flowed through our P&L in the form of lower revenue and accordingly net AR.
Second, we remain in a strong financial position. During the third quarter, we generated $88 million of operating cash flow. We utilized the majority of this cash to repay borrowings on a revolving credit facility. As of September 30th, our total borrowings were $739 million, down from $800 million at June thirtieth, and leverage based on trailing adjusted EBITDA was just 2.9 times. With that, now I'll turn the call back over to Mark.
Great. Thanks, Marc and Jim. We'll now take questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, press one then zero on your touchtone phone. You'll hear an indication you've been placed in the queue, and you may remove yourself from the queue by repeating the one then zero command. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up your handset and make sure your phone is unmuted before pressing any buttons. We'll first go to the line of Ryan Daniels with William Blair & Company. Go ahead, please.
Yeah. Hey, guys. This is Jack for Ryan Daniels. I just have a quick question on the R1 transition. I know that you previously mentioned that the ambulatory piece of the R1 transition wouldn't be completed until the back half of this year in 2022. Just kinda curious if the full R1 transition is behind you at this point, where you're kind of, you know, full steam ahead with normal operations or, you know, are there still components left to transition?
Oh, hey, good morning. This is Marc Richards. The ambulatory component on the front end that was slated to be integrated towards the second half of this year has been put on hold at this point. No, the easy answer is no, we haven't transitioned that remaining component out of our in-house shop.
Okay, understood. Just given the losses that were incurred at the beginning of this year in the first half, I know you guys were kind of expecting to try and recoup some of those losses, and I believe it was just less than about $15 million or so. Just kinda curious, have you made any headway with this or, you know, do you have any color on this?
We've made some progress during the course of the year. Obviously it's not to the level that we had either hoped or expected, and that's what's led us to, as we understand R1's processes, what they can do and what they can't do, that's what's prompted us to put together a very strong and large in-house team to augment the work that they do. We think that that's gonna help materially and move things in a much better direction.
Great. Thanks. Just one final question that I had. I know and you guys kind of touched on this too, but you previously suggested that the DSO figure should return to normal levels, which, I mean historically, you know, little like higher 40s to 50 range. Just kinda curious if you're on track to reach these historical levels by year-end, or, you know, should this be kind of a gradual decline into 2023?
Well, I'd say that remains unknown at this point. As you noted, our DSO did clip down from the second to the third quarter, primarily as a function of additional reserves associated with those receivables.
We'll have to see how things proceed in the fourth quarter to be able to update you on that.
Awesome. Thanks, guys.
We'll go next to the line of Pito Chickering with Deutsche Bank. Go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. On the billing side, I guess to simplify this, and I apologize for this question, but is R1 just not sending out the bills for services you completed or is it more of a collection issue for those bills? I guess to understand where is this complexity that's making this so challenging, having implemented RCM, you know, 12 months ago?
The answer to that is around the world complexity and, you know, obviously the billing questions about the bills, making sure that the bills are right, and then following up with the payers to make sure that you're aggressively pursuing it, which is not, again, because of the No Surprises Act. It's just the nature of how that works. There's the initial billing, there's the persistence in the second half, and then making sure that if we don't get the bills paid on time, that we're working that to make sure that it happens.
I would say that there have been choke points with R1 in each of those areas, and that's why we're specifically targeting where the weak points are to have, as I said in my comments, people with real expertise on these practices, these types of bills, to get it right the first time, to pursue them aggressively and to get them paid. We think that where we're heading is more of a hybrid model than we thought we would need. But we think that given the complexity and seeing the limitations with our outsource partner, we're working together to correct that.
I think that, we're also doing it in very close consultation with our practices, so we can hit the nail on the head.
Okay. Because this has been an issue sort of throughout the year, is there any way you can increase your disclosures and break out the AR days by payer mix, by aging bucket, and give us sort of color on sort of how the managed care, you know, I guess how the AR mix has changed from 4Q of 2021 to sort of, you know, 3Q of 2022 in terms of, you know, how in aging buckets?
Look, that's something we'll consider and come back on.
All right. Can you refresh us on when you automatically write off the AR accounts receivable?
Hey, Pito, Marc Richards. Our accounting model and related estimates is an experience-based model that's driven by aging buckets. As receivables age, call it the same dollar day one versus day two, our allowance continues to accrue on that receivable. It's both time and experience-based.
Change topics. As you think about your managed care out-of-network exposure, it has been pretty stable for a period of time. Are you seeing payers shift in 2023 to more out-of-network, or do you think the out-of-network revenues in 2023 will be the same as they were in 2022?
Well, as I said, while we have payers more, talking more about the No Surprises Act as we would have expected, and talking about the Qualifying Payment Amount, which again has been addressed by the government in their August ruling as having been flawed in the way they at first defined it. We're not seeing any kind of pattern of being pushed out-of-network. I would say it's still, as of now, largely just a normal back and forth about where we are in-network. I would say that payers clearly want us to be in-network.
Okay, great. Thanks so much, guys.
Thank you.
We'll go next to Whit Mayo with SVB Securities. Go ahead.
Thanks. Maybe just to follow up, maybe a different way on some of Pito Chickering's questions. Have you guys been able to collect any of this fully reserved AR from the first half, the $15 million, the $10 million and the $5 million from Q1 and Q2?
Yes. Yeah, we have been able to collect some. Obviously, not as much as we had hoped or expected, and that's why the numbers are where they are. Yes, it's it. The things that we're doing are to make what we do much better, so we don't continue to have the problems that we had from earlier in the year. It's not like it was a wipe-out and people were asleep at the switch.
I guess where I'm trying to get to is, let's just start with the first half. There was $15 million of reserves. I mean, how much of that, I'm just trying to circle a number to think about what the headwinds or tailwinds will be, you know, kind of going into 2023.
I don't have that number handy for what it was. What I would say going into 2023 is that given what we experienced in the third quarter, we came into the fourth quarter in about the same position that we left the third quarter. This is a process that we think will improve things in the fourth quarter and into the first quarter of the year. I would not expect that we will be at a proper operating level on December 31st. I think there'll be still improvement to be made in the first quarter.
What are the assumptions you're making for the fourth quarter? What are you assuming in terms of additional reserves? Or maybe said differently, you know, the pricing metric that we should be anticipating? It just seems that the fourth quarter definitely implies a pretty large sequential increase normally, you know, relative to the, you know, the normal flat to down numbers that we're accustomed to seeing.
Right. That's absolutely tied to the support that we're getting from R1 and the team that we're putting in place. We're getting support from R1 in a variety of areas, but we're seeing that the team that's in place and what R1 is prepared to do about it gives us confidence that we can do that in the fourth quarter. Yes, it is. The reason it's sequentially different than what normally we've seen in the past is frankly because the third quarter was also so weak.
Okay. Sorry to hit this one more time. If there was $10 million in the third quarter, what does your plan have for the fourth quarter?
Hey, Whit. Marc Richards, real quick. I wanna expand on Mark's comment. We also, as noted earlier, had an overhead reduction rate towards the tail end of the third quarter, of which the impact will be felt in the fourth quarter. That's a component of your delta there.
Okay. Just last one there, Marc. Just, you know, it looks like you're tracking really well relative to the $13-$15 million of G&A savings, partially attributed to what you just said, further corporate adjustments. What's the right number that you have year-over-year in terms of G&A in your new internal plan?
Well, I would say a component of our G&A right now is our cost associated with our outsourced revenue cycle function, which is variable. To the extent, as we've seen in the third quarter, the second quarter, cash collections are down, that will also Impact our overhead. I would say they're somewhat tied together there with in terms of our forecast going forward, the relative stabilization of our billing functions and how that equates to overhead.
Okay. I'll follow up with you after the call on that. Thanks.
We'll go next to the line of Tao Qiu with Stifel. Go ahead.
Hey, good morning. I think last quarter you mentioned that one of the problems with the RCM transition is that you cut your internal team earlier than you would have liked to. Now this quarter, I think you're saying you're adding back on some of the staff in-house. Just thinking about that $12 million-$14 million G&A savings you called out, you know, how much of impact should we expect from, you know, this additional hiring activity?
We don't think it'll be a big impact, because R1 is providing financial support to help us do that. We're not doing that on our own. They're not just providing financial support, they're diverting a lot of their own resources to meet this problem. We think that overhead savings will be largely intact.
Okay. Gotcha. I know that we're still in the early phases of the implementation of the NSA, and we saw higher backlog of cases in the system. I know that you don't have a lot of out-of-network revenue today to the extent you may have disputes with payers today. Any early indication you may have on the rate settled through the IDR process?
No, not really, because it's, you know, it's baseball style arbitration. It varies state by state. What I would say is the IDR process, while, as you said, is backlogged, it certainly seems to be working. By that, I mean that our arbitrators are looking not just at the Qualifying Payment Amount, but as they are required to, they're looking at the other factors that are built into the bipartisan legislation to determine what a proper payment is. They have, as I said, 75% of the time, sided with us because of the metrics besides the QPA that are obviously so compelling about Pediatrix.
On the guidance, you know, I saw that the tax guidance. You're guiding from $20.7 million to $30.2 million. I think that suggests $4 million higher tax in the fourth quarter. What is driving that higher rate in the fourth quarter?
I'm sorry, could you repeat that question?
Based on the guidance, you know, on the tax line, you know, I think you are guiding a $4 million higher taxes in the next quarter. What is driving that higher rate?
Yeah, I'm sorry. Taxes.
Yes, Just the higher rate?
Just historical income taxes. That's right.
Okay. One last question. You know, we saw in the news that Brave Care, you know, laid off one-third of its staff in September. Does that have any impact on the speed of rollout, you know, in your clinics with them?
No. No, it doesn't. I mean, I think what they did was a sound move. They were just overstaffed given the size of their operation. We very much applauded what they did, and we think it strengthens Brave as a company.
Okay. Got you. Thank you.
We'll go to Kevin Fischbeck with Bank of America. Go ahead.
Great. Thanks. I'm still kind of struggling to think about how you guys think about this year. You know, obviously, we're all trying to think about what 2023 looks like. I mean, last quarter you were thinking that, you know, that $270 was potentially achievable. Like, should we be thinking about this guidance and adding back, you know, the RCM drag as kind of the starting point for next year? Because in theory, even if you had to write off this stuff going forward, you'll be at the right run rate. Or is that not the right kind of starting point to think about where the base business is operating right now?
Yes. I would say largely that's correct. What I would say if at the start of the year, if we had a crystal ball and knew what we've learned, we would have said that it's gonna be an expensive transition, but we will transition, and we will be better off at the end of it because we will have a far more automated process. We will be able to benefit from systems that we couldn't possibly have internally, and we'll have an in-house team to augment the work that our partner does so that we can, you know, hit the nail on the head. We are confident that at the end of this tunnel, which has been a longer tunnel than we hoped and expected, that we will be back on track.
What back on track means is the other trends that we've seen in the business are what we would have experienced for 2022. We feel that going into next year, there will be a point where we will say we have finally reached the end of that tunnel, and we are operating as a normal business with a fully functioning RCM process.
Like the half of the miss being rates and mix and volume of mix this quarter, that's the type of thing to think about going forward. You really wouldn't expect RCM to be a similar drag next year.
Correct. Right. I am confident that working with R1, with the support they're providing, that we will at some point be able to say that that problem was painful but in the past. Then we'll be looking at the normal trends in the business, which again, the trends in the business, what we saw in this quarter was a decrease in NICU volume. Actually, on ambulatory side, volumes were stronger. We've discussed this before. We don't know if payer mix is a trend, but we have had a couple of quarters of negative payer mix, where it's not the misery loves company.
Our labor costs are higher, and some of that's a function of inflation and the fact that people are moving around a lot more in healthcare, and the issues of healthcare have. You know, we're not immune to it. It's been affecting us less than it affects others, but certainly in an inflationary environment with the healthcare environment, you know, we would assume that's gonna be a factor also going into 2023.
Okay. That's all very helpful. When you talk about the RCM issue, is it related to commercial or Medicaid or Medicaid managed care? Is there a certain part of the payer where the struggle is larger?
No, it's overall.
Okay. I guess, you know, when you think about the labor backdrop, I understand in the quarter you mentioned it was pressure from growth, which is the best way to have it. I guess, how are you thinking about that labor environment for next year? How are you thinking about, you know, the outlook for pricing, you know, relative to that labor cost growth?
Well, I think that the, you know, like what you see in the rest of healthcare, although our staffing component is different than others, we don't have as many nurses as other organizations do. I would say that if you look at inflation, regional inflation, and what's happening in healthcare, and we'll be somewhat affected by it. The fact that we seem to be less affected by it than others, I would assume we'll continue to be less affected for the reasons I said. But I think, you know, we'll see how the nation goes and how healthcare goes. You know, it is something we watch obviously very closely. A lot of the issues that have plagued hospitals affect us.
If hospitals cut staff, it makes it much more difficult for our staff. It makes operating more difficult. It can have a negative effect on volume. All these dynamics which are swirling around in healthcare right now are things that we're watching very closely. I would say overall, we're pleased by where we are in a difficult environment, but it's a difficult environment.
Okay, great. One last, I guess, just quick clarification. I think in the prior line of questioning, I think you said that although you're putting more resources in here, R1 is financing basically most of that, if not all of that. At the end of the day, the savings you expect to get are still the savings you expect to get. That number has not changed. I just wanna make sure I have that right.
Yes.
Okay, perfect. Thank you.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if there are any questions, please press one then zero on your touch tone phone. We'll go to the line of Brian Tanquilut with Jefferies. Go ahead, please.
Hey, good morning. Maybe I'll shift the questions a little bit. Since you called out payer mix as one of the issues for the quarter, can you remind us where the disparity between your average commercial rate is and average Medicaid rate is today?
Hey, Brian, it's Charles. We don't break that out specifically, but you can look in our 10-Q filings and get to a good estimation related to the breakdown of our patient volumes by mix, and then a breakdown of our net revenue by payer source. That's where you can derive some estimation of that.
All right. Got it. That's fine. I guess as I think about the No Surprises Act and how that's impacting, you know, negotiations or discussions with payers, and you called that out in your prepared remarks. I mean, how are you thinking about your negotiating leverage at this point, and what are those rate discussions like?
Well, we don't think about it as leverage. We provide a vital service in major markets. It's a service that's in enormous need. In a challenging time like this, that's particularly the case. One of the reasons that we've done well in the IDR process, I believe, is because people, you know, recognize that our quality standards lead this sector of care. Our discussions are with the payers who have to provide benefits to individuals and to corporations. They know that their members wanna be in our network. It's not just because of our size, it's really because of our quality.
I mean, we're the leader in maternal-fetal medicine and in neonatology. Our expertise saves lives, as Jim said, you know, every day, many times a day. Payers wanna, I think, rightly brag, and I'm not a doctor, but I think they wanna rightly brag that Pediatrix is in their network. That, I think, for the most part, sets up, you know, presumably fair negotiations.
Mark, just to that point, I think this is my last question. Do you have to shore up your litigation or your legal budget or your legal team as we think about just the process there?
I wouldn't say so far. Our general counsel is sitting down the table from me. She works 24/7, seven days a week, so I think we're okay. No, we're not. We don't see right now a reason to materially increase our legal staff.
Okay. Got it. Thank you.
We have a question in queue from the line of A.J. Rice with Credit Suisse. Go ahead.
Hi, everybody. Maybe a couple of quick ones here. I know a lot of the focus is on R1 and the relationship there and with this transition on revenue cycle, is there any change that's happening with the underlying customer base? I know you've added, you know, away from the NICU other service lines. Is that in any way adding to the complication here? I would think on the other hand, frankly, the government business picking up, you might get paid more quickly from them than you do from the commercial side. That would, I think, be a positive. Can you maybe just comment on that a little bit?
Yeah, that doesn't. I could see why it theoretically could, but it doesn't affect the experience we've had. The experience that we've had is really precisely for the reasons we described, where we see you know, chinks in the system. Addressing those chinks we think will get us back to the kind of billing and collection cycles that we should have.
When you
The good news is we're able to see where we're falling short, you know, pretty precisely.
Okay. When you're talking about the payer mix shift, I guess, you know, your volume trends are bouncing around a little bit here. Is it that commercial paid cases is running below historic levels, or is it that there's been more growth on the Medicaid side? I'm just trying to figure out how do you characterize that variance that's pushing your payer mix toward government, away from commercial?
I mean, it's probably a little bit of both that comes into the calculation. We still don't have reason to see anything as a trend. It's one of those difficult things in forecasting in our business and is where payer mix will come out, but it certainly is on both sides.
Okay. Interesting. On the pediatric urgent care, I know that continues to develop. At what point do you have any better sense of where you'll end up on margins as some of these earlier clinics you know really mature at this point? When do you think that could be a driver that impacts the overall performance of the company in terms of profit contribution that's meaningful enough to move the needle for the entire entity?
We're not separately disclosing our margins in primary and urgent care yet. We think that as we get through 2023 into 2024, this will become a factor in our operations and in our growth.
Okay. Maybe just the last one, I guess I'm taking advantage of this. It looks like on the comments about labor, you're saying that is not really a, "We've got to increase wages across the board at an inordinate amount," but you're doing things to either attract staff or retain staff. Is that, am I hearing that right? You just think about base level of increases, is it pretty consistent where you're going into 2023 with where we're coming into 2022, or is it a step up?
Well, no, I mean, it's clearly higher than. These trends are higher than they were earlier in the year for us and for everybody else. I would say going into 2024, we'll have to see. You know, we're looking at this like I would think any employer anywhere is, and certainly in healthcare. There are a lot of people who have you know left healthcare because they were you know burnt out. There's a lot of factors that have affected the workforce. The effects of that are you know not fully baked in. We do everything we can to be the employer of choice and spend as much time as we can with our leaders out in the field so that people want to be here and stay here.
I would say where labor rates go over the course of 2023 is gonna be something we'll have to see. We can only report on, you know, current trends and see what else is out there to give us a sense of where we're going. We think we're controlling it relatively well. As Jim said, some of this is also pressure in specific geographies.
Yeah. I'm just trying to think, do you guys tend to give a base rate increase one time a year, or is that each market sort of does what it needs to do? If you looked at what it was historically, maybe 2%-3% increase, is it now running 5% or, you know, effectively this issue?
No, it's not one set number. It is regionally based. It's demand based. So there isn't a factor that we can just enter in. When I think about, you know, 2023, I say that's why I answered the way I did. It wasn't to be evasive, it's to say that we have to look regionally at supply and demand and what other factors are on the market. But also in what seems to be for at least a little while, an inflationary environment, that's gonna affect us. You know, in healthcare, there are many more locums, you know, temporary.
It's much more. There are many more locums in healthcare today than there were before, and that has a factor also. When you have a higher locum rate, it's hitting us less than others, but it's hitting us more than it used to. That also pushes up labor costs.
Okay. All right. Thanks a lot.
We have no further questions in queue at this time.
Well, thank you, everybody. Enjoy your day and your upcoming holidays.
Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude your conference call for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Teleconferencing. You may now disconnect.