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

Chris Hunter: Yes. Well, I would say thanks, John. Methadone continues to be the gold standard for treatment and we continue to provide buprenorphine as well. But as we’ve looked at our outcomes, we just feel continuously comfortable with our approach overall. I mean I would say that our quality as well, I think is going to continue to be very important. CARF, which is the regulatory body that provides oversight for opioid treatment programs and they’re doing 3,500 site surveys annually. They came in and assessed Acadia at a 98-plus percent compliance across the board, outperforming all of the other OTPs. So we just continue to feel really good about our model. As we frequently say and [indiscernible], the leader of our business as the physician says, this is a program, it’s not a pill where there’s counseling that is required.

It’s not just dispensing treatment. It’s engaging these chronic members of these chronic patients in treatment, particularly in the early stages where their addiction is more pronounced and continuing to engage them in that treatment as they – as their treatment evolves over a period of time. So we have not seen any trend. I think you may be referring to the public health emergency, which clearly allowed doctors to provide buprenorphine for up to 30 patients in care and the data that we saw during the public health emergency was the number of scripts written per month remained largely flat relative to pre-public health emergency and we’re just not seeing any changing trends. We’re continuing to see really strong volumes and just continue to feel very good about the outlook of that business and the leadership team that we’ve put in place.

John Ransom: Thanks so much.

Operator: Our next question comes from Brian Tanquilut with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Brian Tanquilut: Hey, good morning guys and congrats, and welcome Heather. I guess, Heather, my first question, as I think about Q3, historically pre-COVID there was seasonality in the business, largely driven by the RTC business, but it has gotten smaller. How should we be thinking about the Q3 sequential trend versus Q2?

Heather Dixon: Hi. Thanks and welcome and for the question. I would think about it consistently with the sequential trends that we’ve seen. And I would see that we’re expecting – we’re expecting sort of sequential improvement for that to continue. So I think just in line with the expectations and what you’ve seen previously from a seasonality perspective.

Brian Tanquilut: Okay. Got it. And then Chris, as I think about some of these new efforts in dental health parity; how are you thinking – if those stuff which are successful, how do you think that will flow through like operationally or coverage-wise to Acadia?

Chris Hunter: Yes. It’s a great question and one that we’re still trying to analyze. I mean, you’re probably referring to the Biden administration’s recent efforts here to ensure that they’re going to put out these proposed rules that impact how payers demonstrate mental health parity to federal regulators. And I think the way that will show up for payers is still a little bit to be determined. I mean clearly, the Mental Health Parity Act was put in place all the way back in 1996. So this legislation has been around for decades. The question has been around enforcement, which historically has been pretty limited and inconsistent by both federal and state government. So we applaud the focus on this. But in terms of what the downstream impact will be and ultimately how impactful it will be.

I think it’s just – it’s a little bit early for us to tell. The first public mention of the rule came in on July 10th and we’re still waiting on some additional detail in a public comment period after that. So it’s something that we’re tracking overall could lead to adjustments over time, but we just don’t really have much visibility to share at this point.

Brian Tanquilut: Got it. Thank you.

Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Chris Hunter for any closing remarks.