Kevin Fischbeck: I wanted to just maybe dig in a little bit more to kind of how you’re thinking about the volume growth in the back half of the year. I guess when you think about [Indiscernible] trending relatively similar in the back half versus the first half, I guess the way we had been thinking about it any way was that last year, it felt like as COVID spiked at the beginning of the year and then became less and less of an issue that volume to started to kind of normalize in the back half of the year. And so that maybe the comp would be a little more difficult as you got into Q4 and if the growth rate might slow. So I just want to think about how you’re thinking about volume growth and where you are versus maybe long-term trend lines and things like that. How do you put that into context about thinking this rate of growth will continue in the back half of the year?
Sam Hazen: Kevin, this is Sam. Let me give you sort of the backdrop, we think, of what exists for us with respect to volume. And this is more of a general commentary. I’ll let Bill sort of reconcile the back half of the year to the first half of the year with numbers, I’m not sure I can do that at this particular point in time. As we said before, and we continue to believe this we feel that within our markets, there’s unique attributes that are driving solid demand for health care services. Population growth continues to be strong in Texas and Florida, in Utah, Nevada, South Carolina, pretty much Tennessee. Across the board, we’re experiencing population growth within our markets. The second point is we’re investing very significantly in our strategy and our positioning within these communities so that we can respond to our patient needs, put our facilities in the best position to grow.
And we think that’s going to help us sustain market share growth as we move forward. What we’re seeing is that our overall volume assumptions are supported by acuity. Acuity has maintained, some of that strategic, some of that, I think, is the dynamics that exist within the markets. And then the second support mechanism that’s in place, and we view this positively, is the payer mix dynamic. We have seen throughout the first half of the year, commercial admissions outpaced our total admissions. Again, we think that’s reflective of a strong economy and job positioning that a lot of people have in our communities as well as the exchanges. And so we think those will continue on into the last half of this year. And we’re optimistic that those will continue on into the future, at least in the near term.
So Bill, you can maybe try to reconcile…
Bill Rutherford: I’ll just say, I mean, when we think about projecting going forward, we try to take all of those factors into consideration, as Sam mentioned and where we’re seeing year-to-date. Mind you, when we originally said our guidance, we anticipated 1% to 2% admission growth, mid-single-digit outpatient growth. So that’s still hovering around 2% to 3% equivalent admission growth was our expectation. And given the fact that we’re seeing north of 3% admission growth and 5.5% adjusted admission, that’s informing our position for the balance of the year. So I still think around 3 is a good number for the full year now based on the first 6 months of the year. We’re continuing to see good outpatient revenue growth. And so that should support this 5% to 6% equivalent admission expectation for the full year.
Sam Hazen: Yes. And Bill, if I can add one thing. With respect to our investments in our networks. We have, at this particular juncture, the largest pipeline of projects that are in motion, including our outpatient development components which are very robust as well as other inpatient and facility needs there. So our pipeline from an organic standpoint as far as capital that we will see hit the market in latter ’23, ’24, early ’25 is more robust than we’ve seen in pretty much recent years.
