Acadia Healthcare Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACHC) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Gary Taylor: Okay. And then my second one would just be on the New Mexico settlements. I know you’re hopeful that will be reversed on appeal. My question, though, since it is fairly material amount. Is there – does it have any impact – it sounds like no on the investment you’re willing to make on de novo [indiscernible] facilities in the near term. But any other impact just in terms of how you’re thinking about balance sheet management or even just retaining credit availability, anything material to say on how you’re thinking about that at this point?

Chris Hunter: Yes. Thanks for the question. This is Chris. I would just say that we obviously are tracking this very closely. And as I think you can tell from the execution that we’ve seen just in the last few weeks and announcing two JVs in an M&A deal, we continue to be extremely focused on the core business and continuing to advance the company and all the things that we laid out on our Investor Day. So we do not see any material change at all. And obviously, we’re not going to be talking in detail about the litigation and given that, that is underway, but we are super focused on the business as I think our results reflect.

Gary Taylor: Thank you.

Operator: The next question comes from Pito Chickering with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Pito Chickering: Yes. Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Congrats on an excellent quarter and Heather welcome to the team. A follow-up to A.J.’s question; with pricing gets continuing mid-single digits in the back half of the year, that would make sort of over two years with pricing tracking at mid- or above mid-single-digit range. As you sort of look at your contracting you have today in the sort of confidence back half year, is that the right level that we should be thinking about for 2024?

Chris Hunter: Yes, Pito, this is Chris. Thanks for the question. I would say that we continue to work really closely with our managed care team and with our payer partners. And I think that the reimbursement levels that we’ve seen, that we’ve discussed in the beginning of the year have continued to hold true in the second half of the year. I don’t think we’re ready to comment on 2024 yet. But I think we are doing a really good job of helping payers understand the acuity of our patients, the quality of care that we’re providing, the inflationary impact on wages and we’re coming very prepared to those meetings and leveraging the strong partnerships that we built over a multiyear period with our payers to continue to achieve really strong rates.

Pito Chickering: Okay. Great. And then one question on CDC; as like you look at the today’s reimbursement model from methadone clinics, do you see a shifting in the near-term away from a bundled model where you’re paying a monthly fee to provide those drugs and services into more of an unbundled model or managed care splits of payments between providing the medication as the drugs and another payment for providing accounting [ph] services?

Chris Hunter: Yes. Thanks for the question, Pito. And I would say we’re not seeing that trend at all as of right now. We’re obviously in very close contact with payers all the time and there isn’t any movement towards unbundling that we have seen in our extensive negotiations that we’re doing on a regular basis.

Pito Chickering: Great. Thank you so much.

Operator: The next question is a follow-up from John Ransom with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

John Ransom: Hey, I just wanted to circle back on the MAT. There were some concern in the marketplace about some new therapeutic options with [indiscernible]. And I just wondered kind of what your take is on that, if you’ve seen any sort of deterioration in the opportunity from that modality? Thanks.