Lucid Diagnostics Inc. (NASDAQ:LUCD) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

But this is — this starts to kind of fold in or meld into the overall approach to direct contracting, right, to engage with entities that are very — one of the things we learned from engaging with the firefighters is, as I mentioned, they’re very committed that the level of passion and commitment to their members is high. And so our ability to engage with entities that are self-insured, that — where the conversation is a very direct one and one that that drives — that’s driven by their the commitment to do right by their patients is a big opportunity for us and something that we’ll look forward to. I’m not really prepared to give you a sort of a number. I think right now, we’re going to stick with our trajectories with regard to test volume.

We continue — just to clarify something that comes up occasionally, but this is not a pivot, large traditional approach to primary care physicians, specialists and institutions, that’s unchanged and we continue to drive that hard. And we’re certainly working on for figuring out how to do both logistically, but so far so good. So we expect to see a good number, probably, in the next couple of quarters, you’ll be able to give you a little bit more fleshed out targets as to what we need to do.

Mark Massaro: Okay. Great. Maybe just my last question, as we think about the rest of the year, great to see MultiPlan coverage. Just curious if you think you’re getting — I know it sounds like the conversations with payers is improving and the fact that you’re getting paid on some of the denials is excellent. These are relatively small numbers in early days. But do you think as the year progresses, you might be able to sign whether it’s a large national commercial payer or at least some of the regional payers. How should we think

Dr. Lishan Aklog: Yeah.

Mark Massaro: about payer coverage?

Dr. Lishan Aklog: Yeah. I think the lessons — the main — there’s two lessons. One is, really, really want to get the point home that the price is holding. I mean, I really feel like we now have enough that we can feel confident about our — that the price between Medicare as a floor and our $2,500 list price based on out-of-network payments, based on payments from, as Dennis mentioned, larger plans that are out-of-network, that respect that price is really, like, we’re developing increasing confidence that our pricing is going to hold. On the larger plans, our expectation, we’ve had multiple advisory board meetings and conversations. So we have a good finger on the pulse as to what the larger plans are going to expect based on active and retired engagements with active and retired medical directors.

And the message is quite clear that the — that — in order to get a larger plan, it’s likely to require us to have that meaningful clinical utility data later in the year. But in the interim, our conversations with the secondary PPOs, like MultiPlan and smaller plans will continue. So I think it’s not a binary event. But I wouldn’t necessarily project that we’ll knock down one of the larger plans until we have some meaningful clinical utility data here.

Mark Massaro: Okay. That makes sense. Thanks so much.

Dr. Lishan Aklog: Great. Thanks, Mark.

Operator: And our final question comes from Edward Woo from Ascendiant Capital. Your line is open.

Dr. Lishan Aklog: Good morning, Ed.

Edward Woo: Good morning and congratulations on the quarter. In terms of the 40 salespeople that you have, what’s the average tenure and how do you characterize in terms of the productivity and whether there will be room for improvement?