Brad Bickham: Yes, I mean, if you look on the PCS side, a weather event, if you have a snow or an ice storm, particularly in kind of some of the downstate Illinois markets or on some of the more rural markets, a lot of times caregivers can’t make those visits. We attempt to try to reschedule those, but that’s challenging and you can only reschedule that within depending if it’s a weekly auth or monthly auth determines when you can reschedule or have an opportunity to. So it’s unfortunate. I’m always rooting for bad weather on the weekends in those markets because I’m an operator. Unfortunately, we had some that is kind of early in the week. Mondays are worse than it would be if it’s on Friday. So again, kind of a temporary blip.
But if you look at just where we progressed throughout the quarter on PCS, January was impacted by the weather events, but we saw a nice pickup in February and actually exited pretty strong in March and expect those trends to continue. And if you look at our hiring numbers as well, kind of mirror that. January was a little soft because of, frankly, the weather impact there. We actually had nice hiring in February and frankly followed that up with what really was record hiring in March, and our April hiring numbers were solid as well.
Joanna Gajuk: And if I may, just follow-up on the discussion around the 80/20 provision in the access reg. So indirect specifically CMS actually did say something along the lines of they expect the states to look at the rates, right, to see if they are actually positioned. I mean, there’s a lot of requirements now, different requirements for states to disclose that information and keep updating those. So do you expect states to actually, if forced to waive rates to ensure they’re essentially not provided to deliver the care account because obviously if they don’t insured access, you know, they will end up, paying, higher or sending more money for some of these, seniors of people with disability that end up in nursing homes, right? So how do you think about this, forcing some states to improve rate?
Brad Bickham: Yes. Joanna, I’ll start and Dirk may add some color to it. From a, that’s one of the aspects of the rule that I think we like others in the industry are in favor of. I think having more transparency around how rates are calculated and formulated by states is very important. I do think there will be some pressure on states to raise rates. Because as you point out, the alternative is actually putting individuals in a much more costly institutional setting. So I certainly think there’s opportunities over the next six years to really work with states in where those rates need to be in order to be able to maintain the programs at their current status and frankly, and to try to grow the personal care programs in those states.
Joanna Gajuk: And then, the last one is, so you mentioned there’s obviously some clarifications in the rec around some definitions and denominators and things like that, but there sounds like there’s still some additional clarity that you might be expecting. So is this something you expect to come out from the states? Because that was another element of this regulation, right? CMS gave a lot of authority or flexibility to the state to, when it comes to that 80/20 provision. Is that how you read it? Like there’s going to be more information coming up from the states and that’s when you could kind of be more clear when it comes to like what exactly is happening. But obviously, since this has been six years, you might not hear about it for a while.
But I guess, I want to say indirect it also talks about that the states have to say or, I guess, prove that they are ready for it in four years or something like that. So would that mean that we kind of like, four years from now, we hear more details or are you thinking it’s going to be sooner than that? Thank you.
Brad Bickham: Yes. I think, unfortunately, the way states tend to work is they wait more to the back end. So I don’t expect to have any near-term clarification on some of those elements in the rules. And as you point out, there were a lot of provisions that were left open for the states to determine and have some flexibility with. And CMS said that they would provide, I think, technical assistance to help the states go through that process. But this is something that I think states will it’s just reality is they’ll probably take a little bit of a wait and see approach, even though some of the significant provisions for them actually kicked in four years. But I don’t anticipate getting anything in the near-term. I think we’ll be kind closer to the back end of that four-year period.
Joanna Gajuk: Yes. Usually, these governments work when it comes to deadlines, they were just very last minute. And if I may just squeeze the very last one, sorry, because there was also discussion around some of these specific elements called out in this regulation and I would check to buy some larger companies estimated adjusting for the supervisory cost. This is okay. Could be, you know, like, 500 basis points for them? So I know you’re not willing to give specifics, but would it be in this range or much smaller than that?
Dirk Allison: I think it depends on how companies are defining clinical supervision. To get to the number you specified takes a great deal of breadth in the definition for those of us that operate in the industry. So I’m not sure that we would, we’re agreeable with that number at this point in time till we get more clarification. However, I think what we said earlier applies. The fact that they included CMS included clinical supervisory salaries in the definition was very helpful, and it will give us some relief towards the 80/20.
Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Dirk Allison for any closing remarks.
Dirk Allison: Thank you, operator. I want to thank everybody for their interest today in Addus, and for being part of our call. Hope you have a great week. Thank you.
Operator: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.
