Tenet Healthcare Corporation (NYSE:THC) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Saum Sutaria: Yeah. Hey, it’s Saum. I think a couple of things. First of all, you’re right that a lot of what used to be done inpatient with a multiday stay, even if it was a short stay, is turning into hospital based outpatient surgery. And I would say the moment you have something that turns into hospital based outpatient surgery, there’s going to be a subset of patients that will qualify in an ambulatory surgery setting. Over time, it’ll be more the comorbidities that patients have that determine the site of care rather than the technical nature of the potential procedure and what that recovery will look like from the standpoint of being able to ambulate and get home on a same day basis. So that’s really, I think, what will end up determining what the ultimate mix of inpatient hospital based outpatient, especially when there’s certain comorbidities that one needs to be careful with versus a fully ambulatory ASC outpatient setting.

I would tell you that our belief in the ASC setting in this area for much more runway comes from the fact that we continue to see growth in the ASC setting. We continue to see new patients, including Medicare senior patients that are older, being effectively treated in the ASC setting along with expanding the commercial market. And we continue to see physicians coming to USPI wanting to initiate their first orthopedics de novo work in our centers either through new center development or joining existing centers. So I think there’s still demand in runway to go for ASC based orthopedics. Longer term, what we’re focused on is looking at areas within orthopedics or even spine work that today are very much done in the acute care hospital and developing clinical algorithms to figure out how to safely do those types of procedures more actively in the ASC setting.

So in orthopedics, an example of that would be shoulder surgery and as I indicated, spine surgery, and I think we’ll see a migration in those areas in a few years as well.

Operator: Thank you. We’ve reached the end of our question-and-answer session. And ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today’s teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.