But whatever that margin turns out to be, maybe it turns out to be 19%, maybe it turns out to be 19.5%, but whatever it settles out at, once we normalize our hospital admissions, length of stay, kind of the mix of where our patients come from, whatever margin we end up settling at, probably in our ’24 guidance, that’s pretty much is going to be static. There’ll be minimal opportunity to improve that margin. So again, whether it’s 19%, 19.5%, 20%, whatever it settles out at, for our go-forward mix post-pandemic, it’s going to be then pretty flat, hard to grow that margin. So we’re still kind of guessing when things settle out, but it’s going to be sometime in ’24 is a high, high, high probability. We’re going to be above our pre-pandemic census early in the first quarter of ’24 if we don’t put — if we don’t post it in the fourth quarter of this year.
But that’s just a long-winded way of saying, Joanna, yes, we think we have a tailwind on pre-pandemic margin increasing it, just not quite sure where it’s going to settle out yet. But the fourth quarter isn’t going to be representative of a go-forward annual guidance. It might be representative of an annual fourth quarter guidance though.
Kevin McNamara: Which would be consistent with all pre-pandemic fourth quarter marginal contribution prints at that point.
Dave Williams: That’s exactly right.
Joanna Gajuk: Right. Usually the highest margin, right. No, I agree. And then, I guess to that end, in terms of you mentioned on the census, you kind of breached that 19% mark and the outlook was raised, it sounds like, yeah, you’re expecting Q4 to sequentially improve from Q3. So how should it be — a similar question, I guess, how should you think about next year? So for this year, I guess you’re talking about revenues growing 9% this year, largely on that census growth, really. So, can you grow high single digits on top of that number again, or that creates a path for comp? I guess, any framework for how we should think about things?
Nick Westfall: So just from an operational standpoint, I think the sequential component that you’re seeing is illustrative, built-in and baked into some of my comments earlier, we feel very good about the sustainability of sequential ADC growth, Joanna, on a go-forward basis. In terms of the overall rate, of course, we don’t want to comment about what we think ’24 will be until we get into talking about 2024 guidance. But my comment is really just to reinforce the overall confidence we have in our ability to continue to methodically build clinical capacity that will continue to translate into admissions growth and ADC growth. And it’s a different way of saying the pandemic is behind us. We feel great around. We’re hitting on all cylinders, including, just as importantly, everything we’re investing from a human capital and cultural standpoint back at our individual locations.
And so, we’re on a good path and trajectory. But in terms of range of ADC and guidance, we’ll talk about it when we get into ’24. But just from an overall confidence standpoint, we sit here very confident based upon the results we’re printing and anticipate continuing to produce on a go-forward basis.
Kevin McNamara: And Nick, the answer to your question also, Joanna, probably lies in a factor that’s outside of our control. As Dave has indicated, it’s kind of an unusual situation as things were tough in the hospice arena, our competitors, who are smaller, less well capitalized, and maybe less professionally managed, struggled, more mightily than we did. And so, a lot of our improvement was — some of our improvement was based on taking business away from those struggling competitors. So, to the extent that our ADC in the quarter was up 9.4%, that’s a historically high number. To the extent that you talked about where is that going to settle in, some of that comes down to our competitors. Some of the competitors, especially in Florida, come back to kind of a recovered rate of doing business.
