Okay. All right. Let's start.
Yeah, let's do it.
Yeah, we're on it. Oh my God, tell me your last name again.
Minal Sethna.
No, no, your last name's Sethna
Okay.
I just want to make sure I say it right. Hi, this is Lisa Gill. I head up healthcare services here at J.P. Morgan. It is with great pleasure this morning that we have Option Care with us. We have CEO John Rademacher and new CFO, Minal Sethna? No.
Yes.
No?
Yeah.
Okay. What we're going to do here is John is going to, and John and Minal are going to run through the presentation, and then I'm going to have a quick little 20-minute fireside chat. So with that, let me turn it over to John.
Great. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you, everyone. Pleasure being with you today, and again, excited to share some updates around the business, both as we have preliminary results for 2024 and then our forward view into 2025 and our forward view into 2026. Normal housekeeping matters. Certainly want to call out that we may be making forward-looking statements. I ask that you take a look at our Safe Harbor and other statements, both in our investor relations site as well as embedded in the presentation as we have put forward. As an organization, our focus is around providing extraordinary care to our patients and their families. At the center of everything we do is the patient.
Our team and our organization is really oriented around that opportunity to really make a difference in the lives of others and knowing that there's a loved one at the receiving end of every dose that we dispense and every nursing event that we oversee. I think that's important when you think about what we do as an organization, and really, that's the driving force behind all of our actions and the partnerships that we have broadly across the healthcare ecosystem. Reflecting on 2025 and really looking at 2026, the solid foundation of the business, again, this is a team sport. The team continued to execute extremely well, taking advantage of opportunities that we've had with some industry changes and just differences that are happening in the way that care is being delivered across the country.
But we were extremely well positioned, and the team capitalized on that, delivering strong preliminary results. Again, unaudited financials, but the preliminary results were about a 13% revenue growth for the year, about a 6% Adjusted EBITDA growth, and about 10% Adjusted EPS growth at the midpoint. So again, solid foundation, continued really great progress from that standpoint in really executing the business. Really proud at expanding the patient census in which we manage and have the ability to support. So during the year, we served over 315,000 unique patients as part of our service model, really driving that forward. And that capitalized on some of the changes in the industry dynamics, some of the investments that we made in improving our patient acquisition and really driving additional products within our product portfolio to expand that.
And then we made some investments into the business, whether it was through M&A and our acquisition of Intramed Plus. And that continued to be just a great addition to our business and expansion into a really important marketplace in the Southeast. Continued investments into our infusion clinics, our pharmacies, and really our operating model as we move that forward. So that ability to continue to build out a national network, have that local responsiveness was important. That foundation and really the momentum that we carried through the back half of the year continues as we now look forward into 2026. And so we're well positioned as we move forward, knowing that we still had some work to do and a step down that was going to be expected within the Stelara and biosimilar space.
But we had committed in the third quarter call around our ability to continue to grow and continue to capitalize on the incredible position that we hold in the marketplace. And that ability to drive not only growth in Adjusted EBITDA of 5% at the midpoint, as well as 7% on the EPS growth, just shows the strength of the breadth of the portfolio, as well as the opportunities that we see that sit before us.
Continue to invest in the business as we think about how we can continue to grow and look for additional vectors of growth, whether it's additional therapies, therapeutic categories, and deepening the relationships in those local markets, and really driving that excellence of the clinical care that we deliver in alignment with our payer partners and helping to think about that total cost of care and the ability to drive better outcomes at a lower cost. We announced earlier in the announcement that we had an expansion of the authorization for share repurchase. And as we think about our capital deployment strategy, first and foremost, continue to invest in the business, making certain that we are driving the state-of-the-art facilities and really capitalizing on the market aspects, investing in our people, our process, our technology, our facilities.
Continue to pursue adjacent and creative M&A opportunities as we move forward in a very disciplined way, but we're going to continue to look for those opportunities like what we found with Intramed Plus, and then continue on our path of periodic share repurchase as part of the way that we're looking at a capital deployment strategy. Option Care Health, again, as a national provider, as I mentioned previously, we have this national scale that allows us to really leverage the capability set and the clinical competency, but be very local. Healthcare is still a local business. That ability to be responsive at the local level, serve the unique needs of those different markets, really allows us to differentiate ourselves in the marketplace. We have over 190 locations in which we serve patients through our pharmacies and our infusion clinics.
We have over 750 chairs that we operate as part of that expansion of the home, the infusion suite, and the infusion clinic, and when you look at kind of the breadth that we have with the payer relationships, we have about 96% coverage of the U.S. population in the way that we have looked at managing being in an all 10 of the top 10 national payers, but also those regional payers. We have over 800 payer relationships, over 1,400 contracts that brings us broad market access as we move that forward.
And the business continues to generate really strong cash flow that allows us to continue to invest back into the business, allow us to have flexibility within our balance sheet, and allow us to make certain that we are making the investments that are required for us to capitalize on what we think is market dynamics that are going to continue to drive care into the home and allow people to age in place and continue to execute at a lower cost setting. When we talk about just the overall demand on that, home infusion continues to grow as part of the overall infusion therapy set that's a bigger part of that.
We continue to capitalize on our position and making certain that we're collecting our fair share, that we're capturing that market demand, that we're making investments into our commercial teams so that reach and frequency and that partner of choice status remains high for Option Care Health as being a partner to help either transition patients out of a hospital into their home safely and effectively and/or to capture that chronic condition management or really be well positioned to support patients that have rare disease that we have those products with part of our portfolio. That is a wide range of products that we have in the portfolio. I know over the last few years, we've kind of focused on one, but the reality is we have a broad portfolio of products. We have a full spectrum within the pharmacy.
And the reach of our clinical team at the point of care is a big part of the value that we can drive, that oversight and the insights that we can gain by being able to serve that patient in the home or in one of our infusion suites. As I had mentioned previously, some of the stats and the resilience that we have, over 200, 2.5 million deliveries and infusions were administered by Option Care Health during the year. As I called out, we have over 600 therapies within our formulary and our portfolio that we serve and that we're dispensing on an annual basis. And 88% of our revenue is coming from a commercial counterparty.
So, that ability for us to partner with the payer community, whether it's in ASO business, at-risk business, MA business that they have, we continue to be well positioned to capitalize on that as we move forward and continue to work to look for ways to expand and grow that ability to serve Medicare beneficiaries on a broader basis. I talked about the diversified portfolio, some of the numbers that we had put forward, and Minal will go into a bit more detail, but the diversification of the revenue and gross profit mix really drives a sustainable growth for us as an organization. Solid foundation, multiple vectors that we can continue to pursue. That opportunity for us to utilize the breadth of our clinical capabilities and the pharmacy infrastructure just sets us up well.
When you look at kind of the breakout of the revenue mix, the branded pharmaceuticals, again, having that higher sticker price certainly are a bigger portion of the revenue. But when you look at the gross profit mix, it's a smaller part. And that is a big part of that driver of the sustainability that we have in both that opportunity to capitalize on generic events, biosimilar events, and really driving that business as we move forward of having the ability to bring those patients onto service regardless of the script that's being written by the prescribing physician, so a breadth of diversification, a breadth of the portfolio, and I think it shows the sustainability and durability of the business and why we're excited about the growth trajectory as we move forward.
One of the things that we called out, and again, an important aspect of that is, and we clarified some of the comments that we had made previously, we do not have a single therapy in that breadth of therapies that represents more than 4% of the company gross profit. So again, that just shows the breadth of the product portfolio, the balance that we have across the profit pools, and the way that we're looking at managing the business as we drive that moving forward. So with that, I'll turn it over to Minal to give a little bit more detail.
Great. Thanks. Good morning and thank you, John. So let me keep going here. Just real quick on our 2025 results, John highlighted a couple of things. I'll say in general, we finished across revenue, EPS, EBITDA a little bit above our guide. So we feel really good where we finished the year overall with a 13% top line and really bottom line on the EPS side 10%. We're still in the midst, as every company is, in closing the books for the year. So we're still working through cash flow. We'll be less than the $320 million, but really as we looked ahead and we thought about how do we leverage our balance sheet for some strategic working capital initiatives, whether that's inventory purchases, maybe getting some better payment terms, that sort of thing.
So we'll have more detail on that when we talk to you in February in our formal earnings call. And then I'll cover shares in a moment as we talk about capital allocation. I want to spend a couple of minutes here. I know this has been the slide that a lot of our investors and partners have been waiting for. So our 2026 guidance, we had talked about in the fourth quarter that we expected to grow in 2026. I think with our guide, this represents the percentage growth, represents the midpoint of our guide. That's a 4% growth year over year that we're looking at. EBITDA a little bit above that at a 5% growth, and then EPS at a 7%, diluted EPS at a 7% growth. But I want to talk through some of the assumptions. I know that's where many of the questions start.
From a revenue perspective, we talked about the fact that between the Stelara IRA, the IRA impacts with what's going on with biosimilars that have been coming into that space, we're seeing some revenue headwind going into next year. That is baked into that, but that 400 basis point of revenue headwind is really what takes an 8% growth down to 4% for the year. As we think about the gross profit impact of, it's not just Stelara, but it's Stelara and some related biosimilars, Stelara biosimilars. We're estimating at this point at the $25-$35 million headwind. Again, year over year, you can think about that as largely being also an EBITDA headwind as well. So that would really take, without that headwind, would take our EBITDA from a 5% growth to something closer to 11%.
The other thing I wanted to clarify on that headwind is it's different than the conversation that we were having with you about a year ago. This headwind is not related to a single drug, Stelara, at a particular price, but it's really the fact that Stelara remains part of a formulary. Prices have come down on Stelara. A number of biosimilars have come into the market. So those prices are, they vary. They're also similar, though, to a Stelara pricing. There's also next-gen drugs. So we have a number of patients that have different choices. They've got to decide with their physician what it is that they want to do in terms of which therapy makes sense for them.
So it's a broader portfolio of choices for patients that they're going to be weighing in on as it relates to what's on a payer formulary and what do physicians think is best for the patient. And then last piece, I just wanted to add also, a lot of discussion, but Stelara and the biosimilars, so that's an aggregate number that we're talking about, represent both less than 1% of the company revenue and less than 1% of the gross profit in 2026 going forward. So when we think about concentration, this really doesn't have much materiality anymore as we think about 2026 and going forward. So we were pleased to get this out there. I know a lot of people have been asking, and I think this really helps people understand the breadth of the business going forward. A couple of things I want to point out.
I know there's been a lot of discussion about a year-over-year growth and what's been going on, but if you really take a step back, if we look at a five-year CAGR and we take a look at what has our revenue and EBITDA done over a 2020 to a 2025 period, double-digit growth, right? A 13% revenue growth that, of course, embeds in a number of acquisitions that we've done over the years, but also a 16% EBITDA growth as well. So seeing that we're getting good leverage off of the revenue growth that we have. And while it's not in the charts, if you take a look at our 2021 financial results, and you can go back in any portal and look at that, in the midpoint of our 2026 guide, that's an 11% revenue growth and an 11% EBITDA growth.
And I bring that up because when you think about bookending all the discussions we've been having the past few years about Stelara, 2021, really not much Stelara, 2026, not much Stelara. So that gives you really a view of the strength of the business when you think about that over the five-year period and 11% revenue growth, 11% EBITDA growth. Just a couple of comments on capital allocation. I've been talking about this since the third quarter earnings call when I joined and conferences from that. I mean, the great news is this is a strong cash-generating business, and I think that's what really gives us a lot of confidence in the growth trajectory that we can really drive, whether that's, as John talked about, investments we're making in the business for future growth as we think about getting some better cost leverage as we continue to scale.
We think about acquisitions. That's our second priority. Some nice tuck-ins that are adjacent, accretive. That's important to us. And then we talked about the fact that we announced an expansion to our share authorization as well. Really, what it does is it gives us the latitude to think about periodic share repurchases when it makes sense. The great news is with our cash generation capabilities, we have the opportunity to do all of those simultaneously, and that's what we've been doing. And it'll leverage finishing the third quarter at less than two times. We feel really good about where we are from a balance sheet perspective. And last one for John.
Thanks. As we look at the business and kind of as we move into this next generation of thinking forward for 2026 and beyond, extremely well positioned as an enterprise. Really, there continues to be a shift to lower-cost settings where you're looking for high-quality care at a more appropriate cost, well positioned to capture that demand as that moves forward. We have long-standing partnerships with both payers as well as pharma and looking for ways to leverage our infrastructure and to provide meaningful value to them as they're thinking about managing the total cost of care or getting access for their products in the marketplace. That national scale with local responsiveness is something that, again, puts us in a unique position to be able to be that partner of choice and be able to reach into the marketplace and really provide that.
As Minal called, the foundation is solid, continues to grow, that broad foundation of that double-digit growth and looking at the breadth of the portfolio across all 600-plus therapies is the way that we look at that. And again, we have a proven team that can execute, right? This is a business that requires that local execution, that responsiveness at that local level. Having that management team, and really, this is a team sport broadly across that enterprise of being well positioned to capture on those market opportunities at the local level, but leverage that national scale and use that diversification of the portfolio products and therapies that we have, again, we think puts us in a really great position to continue on that path of sustainable growth and really thinking more broadly around how we drive that into 2026 and beyond. So with that, open for questions.
Thank you so much, John. And thank you for all the comments. Minal, welcome to your first J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.
Cheers.
So I really want to start with a few things. One, thank you for all the detail. We have been talking about Stelara for over a year now, so I'm happy we can put that in the rearview mirror. But when I think about this slide that you put up around biosimilars and the benefit around biosimilars, is it simply that the IRA pricing is so low around the reimbursement for Stelara as to why the biosimilar wouldn't be beneficial in some way?
Yeah. So I think as we've been talking about, that product just had some unique characteristics in the sense of the gross profit that we were able to enjoy, or the product profit on that was at such a different differentiated rate than the rest of our branded products, that as that continued to move down, the ability of the biosimilars to catch up just was difficult. Nothing else in the portfolio has that characteristic, so I don't look at the Stelara situation and/or the IRA as changing kind of our perspective around biosimilars. In most instances, the biosimilar is a good event in the sense of normally with a branded pharmaceutical, the innovator has an opportunity to not have to discount their product substantially. Once we get biosimilars manufacturers into that equation, we have the ability to use our scale to compete to get best acquisition cost on that.
And so we expect that pattern to maintain as we move forward. Again, knowing that you have a fall in price in the fact that the biosimilars entering into the marketplace, that you're kind of working that through. But we think the dynamics continue to set up well for future biosimilars, Stelara just being a different animal.
From that point, John, Minal made a point when she was talking about capital allocation and talked about they're making some investments in inventory. Do you see some incremental opportunities in 2026, whether it's around biosimilars or generics?
Yeah. We are looking at the portfolio broadly and that ability to use that balance sheet to whether it's working capital or other investments that we want to make. We're always going to capitalize on, can we hit a new tier for rebates? Can we think about discounts for prepayments or prior payments ahead of that? We're always looking at that. We're looking at the safety stock that we have on hand. We did some work during the year around thinking about tariffs, and some of that is expensed in med supplies, but that's the strength of the balance sheet. We have that ability to really be thoughtful and strategic in the way that we're utilizing the balance sheet in order to capitalize on those opportunities as they present themselves.
And I know over the last four-plus years that I've followed your company, there's always been this investor focus on the mix between chronic and acute and what that means to your gross margins. Perhaps we can start to talk about the split in profit and contribution and growth rates with no drug now making up more than 4% of your portfolio that she talked about and Stelara now less than 1%. How should we think about the different drivers on the different therapies going forward and what the key drivers are for the growth rates as we move beyond Stelara?
Yeah. Last year, we capitalized on some industry dynamics in which one of our major competitors started to step away from the acute. You saw outsized acute growth in 2025. That's not going to repeat in 2026. I think we'll go back towards more of our traditional in that, let's call it mid-single digit on the acute growth. We still think there's opportunities for probably more accelerated growth in the chronic space just based on new product entry as well as some of the price points of that. As we move forward, you're going to still feel a little bit of bigger growth in the chronic space than what you're going to feel in the acute.
But we're always looking for opportunities to leverage the investments that we're made to really drive efficiency, looking for that leveraged growth as we move forward and capitalizing on the infrastructure so that we're the most efficient and effective at being able to administer those drugs. So I think you'll see a higher growth rate in the chronic than you will in the acute that will put a little bit of pressure on the gross profit percentage, but the dollars are real and the drop-through is meaningful.
You highlighted that the number of infusion suites you have today. You've also talked about the increase in growth of utilization of your infusion suite to really capture future growth more so than what benefits you see in the home. Can you talk about how that flows through to margin and some of the leverage you can get in a suite versus that, as you call it, the windshield time of the clinician?
Yeah. It does a couple of things. Number one is it does allow us to offer some additional products that potentially don't make sense in the home and expand that portfolio. A lot of it is really around the efficiency that we get with the nursing community, the ability for us to oversee multiple infusions at the same time safely, effectively in one of our infusion suites as opposed to the one-to-one relationship that you have with the nurse in the home. You don't have the drive time going to and from the patient's residence in order to do that. So there's that efficiency gain that we get out of that and that expansion of the product. So we're really encouraged by the investments that we've made there. I think as we look, about 35% of our nursing visits are being done in one of our infusion suites.
We get the question, what could that be? I would tell you it would be more than 35%. But we want to give patient choice. That's an important part of it. We will always offer the home for the medically fragile, the immunocompromised, the ambulatory constrained. That ability to reach into the home is a big part of the value proposition that we have. But offering them choice so that if they're out doing activities, daily living, they're able to be out and about in the community and to be able to schedule and stop by and utilize one of the infusion suites as opposed to having to get home, clean their house, and welcome somebody into it is something that we like to offer, and we see that that uptake continues to increase.
John, you and I have talked in the past about site neutrality. It feels like there is some momentum gaining in D.C. from both sides around site neutrality. Can you talk about what the potential benefit would be to your business if we were to see site neutrality?
There's a couple of things that are underway. We've been very active really since 2017 in trying to get the 21st Century Cures Act fixed on that and having a broader access for home infusion for Medicare Fee-For-Service beneficiaries. And that activity continues to be underway. I would say there's been some positive movement on that. So the PPHIA, the Preserving Patient Access to Home Infusion Act, something that we have been a sponsor and supporter of as we move forward with the industry. It's gone before Ways and Means Committee. We testified or the head of National Home Infusion Association, Connie Sullivan, was able to go and testify to Congress on that and the benefits that that would bring. So we're getting some good movement there. It's Washington. How things actually move from conversation actually to legislation and into act is still yet to be determined.
But there's some positive movement, Lisa, that I'd say I'm more optimistic today than I have been given those conversations underway. That as well as site neutrality, when you think about low-cost setting, when you look at what we can offer in home infusion, in most instances, we're anywhere between 20% and 30% less expensive than a hospital outpatient department. And to eliminate a bed day, it's anywhere between 40% and 50% less. So that opportunity for us to continue to articulate that we are on the right side of that cost-quality equation and that we're part of the solution and the total cost of care, we think is an important aspect.
The infection rate for the patient is materially lower in the outpatient setting.
Less risk associated with hospital-acquired infections and other aspects, and the first question a patient asks when they're admitted to the hospital is, "When can I go home?" so our ability to help facilitate that and safely and effectively move them in that direction, again, we want to capitalize that as we move forward.
Knowing that most of your contracts, even for Medicare Advantage, are all commercially based, 95%, as we think about changes that are coming about, whether we think about IRA, MFN, WAC changes, is there any potential impact to the way you're reimbursed from an insurance perspective?
We have not seen much of our portfolio being recognized within any of the Most Favored Nation or any of those types of pricing, and you've seen Rose Garden celebrations and signings and those types of things. Those tend to be those bigger blockbuster oral solid type of drugs, and pharma manufacturers are finding ways to give some value back to CMS through that. But at this point in time, we don't see anything that's really on the near-term horizon that will have an impact there, but we're always keeping our eye on that. We know that in some instances, the cost of healthcare in this country is not sustainable. We've got to be on the right side of driving the efficiencies and effectiveness of care delivery, and our focus is around that efficiency.
I will tell you a lot of the conversations with the payer community as they have been working and trying to find solves for their medical loss ratios and some of the spikes that they're feeling there, we're on the right side of those conversations, right? The utilization of home infusion and our infusion suites as part of that solution set helps to reduce that total cost of care. And so a lot of our conversations around that total cost of care and how we can help them manage those medical loss ratios to more acceptable levels.
And from that perspective, John, are you having different conversations? Are the managed care organizations putting in different levels of prior authorization so that the patient is, I hate to use the word steered, but steered more towards home infusion or an infusion suite rather than even if the physician writes the prescription to be done at a hospital outpatient setting?
Yeah. There is a lot more conversation and a lot more movement around site of care initiatives that are really helping to identify those opportunities to right site of care to help to influence the member to make that best choice. There's some conveners that are looking at changing benefit design so that there's more out of pocket if you're choosing the more expensive setting. So all those things we think are positive trends, but again, just reinforce this total cost of care and why we're part of that solution moving forward.
When we think about new drug development, there's definitely enthusiasm building again around a potential Alzheimer's drug coming to market. I remember back a couple of years ago, we talked about this and there was a lot of buzz. Can you maybe talk about where we are today and do you see a potential opportunity here and the timeline?
Yeah. We continue to be, I think, as optimistic as you can be around neurological disorders. We think that gastro continues to be a big important area. We think there's opportunities in oncology to move more of that into the infusion suites, into the home and being able to manage that patient census. So we think that continues to move forward. We are starting to see some movement on the Alzheimer's drugs moving out of the academic medical centers into the community setting as you hear of some of the developments of some of the diagnostic blood-based diagnostics associated with that. When you think about the progression of disease, and especially in Alzheimer's, time is not your friend.
And some of the challenges that have existed is when you have as many hurdles that you have to go through getting a PET scan, getting a read of that PET scan, and all of the aspects that have kind of been the precursors to getting the patient onto service. If that starts to move forward and it moves closer to the general practitioner or moves farther up the stream as opposed to just the neurologist in the academic medical center, that time is really important. So none of the products that have come forward actually cure. They slow the progression of the disease. And so the sooner you can actually diagnose and get the patient onto treatment, the better the outcome.
So a lot of the conversations with the pharma manufacturers as well as with some of those neurologists are around how do we start to move that closer and how do we make that diagnosis sooner. Again, that could benefit us as we're thinking about moving that forward so it doesn't have to go to the academic medical center and it doesn't have to go to the top neurologist in order to make that diagnosis and that prescription.
When I think about other therapy areas, obviously we were talking about Alzheimer's here, but you and I have in the past talked about cell and gene therapy and the opportunities there. Can you maybe just spend a couple of minutes talking about what areas you're most excited about?
Yeah. When you look at the platform that we have and especially with the build-out of the infusion suites and the infusion clinics across the country, the conversations as we're talking about, I'd say in the areas of neurological disorders, I'd say in gastro. And I continue to call out that oncology is going to be an area that we think that there's opportunities. We don't do a lot of oncology today.
The reason why?
Historically, it's been kept at the oncology clinic or the hospital outpatient department. And you called out a couple of things that could put some changes in the economics associated with that with site neutrality, etc., as well as products like Keytruda, Opdivo, Yervoy. Those PD-1s have a lot of the same characteristics that the rest of our portfolio has. Our nursing community can serve those patients extremely well. Our infusion suites are well equipped to be able to do that. So we think that that'll be something that we'll continue to invest in. And we think that there's a value proposition for all parties as we're thinking about moving that forward.
I'm sorry, the first part of my question, is there anything beyond what you just talked about? Is there any specific new drug therapy that you're saying, "Hey," and I know there's a lot of conversations that go on here and we hear about a lot of new innovations.
You'll see my pause because I'm not calling out single products ever again.
I'll never ask that question again. Let me retract that question.
Exactly. I was going with categories, Lisa, just because I don't want to have to talk about the next Stelara within a portfolio. But in all seriousness, we continue to work on some of the limited distribution in the rare space. We think there are some. Those are a little bit harder to predict in the sense of PDUFA dates we don't control, endpoints, whether they achieve them, we don't control. But we are working. We support clinical trials today with our nursing community and with our infrastructure that gets us earlier into those conversations. And then it positions us well to be a channel partner as those products move towards commercialization. So we feel good about that, but I'm a little bit reluctant to call out single products on that given the breadth of the portfolio that we have and the strength of the overall platform.
One of the themes for the conference, obviously, is innovation. And we've talked about that from a drug perspective, etc. But the other side is artificial intelligence and how it'll play into healthcare. Can you talk about how it impacts your business and how you're utilizing it?
We had called out really over a year ago a partnership with Palantir in which we're utilizing their Foundry to advance some of the things that we're doing. As a healthcare services organization, we have a significant amount of administration that has to happen in order to bring the patient onto service, whether it's through benefit verification, authorization, all of the steps associated with that. So a lot of the use cases that we're doing right now are really focused around that pathway from the moment we receive a referral and trying to streamline that. I've heard the term before and I really like it. We think of it as being cobot and not robot in the sense of we think that there's ways that we can provide tools to our team members to make them more efficient and effective as we drive that forward.
We're not looking at dislocation of our workforce. We think we can make them more efficient. We can take some of the rote activities out of that and streamline that process, and that allows us to grow our patient census without having to grow our labor force, right, associated with that. The more efficient and the more effective we can make them. We're doing things like nurse route optimization and scheduling. There's ways that we can use the advanced analytics and some of the AI to improve the efficiency that we have there. When you think of two and a half million infusions that we see, that ability to leverage and utilize that workforce in the most efficient and effective way, those are the types of things that we're doing.
There's inventory management in those types of aspects where you can use AI to help better predict where you need to have product in those points in time, so those are the types of things, the backroom. We haven't really spent a lot of time in putting it in front of the clinician. A lot of that, we still have, it's still early. That point of care is an important aspect of our business, and we're going to be thoughtful before we would start to utilize it from that perspective, but there's so much administrative process that we think we can just drive efficiencies with.
One of the things that also stood out today is that your leverage is down to 1.9 times. I remember five years ago where you were. And I look at what's happening in the marketplace. When we think about home infusion and the number of acquisitions you've made, it's still a fairly cottage industry where there's a lot of probably opportunity. So how do you view the marketplace right now? Is it we're going to look for things specific, like I think about Rochester, right, which really made a lot of sense being near the Mayo Clinic, South Carolina, which got you into a new market? How do I think about rolling up some of those other players, and what we see right now for valuations?
Yeah. It still is a very fragmented market. If you take a look at the NHIA data, there's over 800 infusion providers across the country. We think there's opportunities for us to be a logical organization to help roll that up. I think that sits kind of across the spectrum, whether it's single site, smaller operators that are looking for the exit and thinking it that way. I think there are health systems that have some home infusion assets that are reevaluating their strategy and trying to figure out where they want to deploy their capital that might create opportunities.
We think that we're, again, through what we've demonstrated with organizations like Intramed Plus, not only are we a good acquirer and are we able to drive that value, but we're a good custodian for those owners that have kind of built their business and they want to turn it over to an organization that has the integrity focused around compliance and really bringing their team members as being part of our team into the equation. I think we've demonstrated that ability to do that in a very efficient and effective way.
Before I give John the opportunity to give his closing thoughts, anything you'd like to initially share just kind of with your thoughts on the company, what your thoughts were coming in and how you feel today?
Sure. I would say to me, good companies are built on people and culture, and I think that really is, you can see it. You can see what the people have had access to, and we want to be able to broaden more people to meet with investors from the company, but I think that's been important. And I think really everything we've been able to accomplish as a company starts with our people. It starts with our culture, and then being in a great space where we're not just doing good for ourselves, but doing good much more broadly, I think those pieces are important, so it's been really, it's 100 days. This is my 100-day mark, and I'm happy to be here.
A lot has gone on in those 100 days, but I'm really excited to be here and really take the company from this point where we can put Stelara aside and really talk about the rest of the business and all the opportunities that we have.
We really appreciated the fact that you gave us guidance again this year. Now you have set the precedent for going forward. John, we have one minute left. I like to end this with, is there anything we didn't touch on today or any thoughts you want to leave the investor community with and how to think about Option Care Health?
Yeah. We've been saying this for years. The strength of just the enterprise, the foundation, it's never been in question. I understand some of the nuances of the product and some of the anomalies that created in the returns. But at its core, the value that we deliver to our patients, to the prescribing physicians, to their families on that, as well as the partnership with both payers and pharma, we are extremely well positioned. There is no other organization that has the national reach, but that local responsiveness. And as Minal said, it really is a team sport. We've got a team that understands the important role that we play in the communities that we serve, but also the value that we can extract out of that as we operate efficiently.
So really excited about the position we're in, but I think more importantly about the future as we're looking forward.
Great. We are too. So thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you everybody for joining us today.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you so much.