Daniel Cancelmi: It was in terms of the sequential increase that we’re assuming from three to four in medical fees. I mean, some of it also relates to, it can be a combination of volume. It can be a combination of contracts we’ve entered into that we know how the pricing lies out.
Saum Sutaria: Yes. And to your question about in-source/out-source, I mean, our managed care contracting platform is pretty thorough. I mean, we talk about what we do with respect to hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers and other things. But we do maintain active physician service contracts for hospital-based specialties. And we do have markets in which we have, over the last couple of years, in-sourced, out-sourced — previously out-sourced work. Again, I would refer you to even back during the pandemic, I made some comments about the fact that we undertook a comprehensive review of every physician service contract in the company to restructure, consolidate, scale services, and work with some of our better partners. And when those weren’t available either due to market penetration issues or competitive issues they may have had, we looked at opportunities to in-source.
So, we understand that these fees are going up. But all year long and going into next year, we’re planning them in the way we issue guidance.
Operator: Thank you. Our final question today is coming from Sarah James from Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is now live.
Sarah James: Thank you and I want to echo my well wishes to Dan. I appreciate the comment that you just made about the service contract review, but I think also during the pandemic, Tenet stood out in making investments in technology for efficiency and scheduling. So, I’m wondering, has that had any impact on your mix of contracted physician labor? And then also, are you seeing any of the incremental pushback on in-patient versus monitoring clarification that some of your peers are in acute?
Saum Sutaria: Yes. So, on the technology front, I appreciate you remembering that. I mean, we deployed technologies that assist with scheduling in most of our high acuity like surgical, cath lab, their procedure areas, along with some interesting things that we did even in emergency room access for lower acuity scheduled, but truly emergent care and those have been paying off well. We’ve also continued to utilize scheduling technologies in our out-patient specialty practices. And one of the reasons we do that is it gives us the ability in a data-driven way to track week-to-week volume demand movements in our specialty practices, which we roll up countrywide to understand what’s going on in the different specialties because the technology provides an automated source of having that data.
So, yes, I mean, we feel good about those investments. They were not large investments. They’re simple, usable technologies that are physician-friendly and we feel pretty good about those. In terms of in-patient/out-patient pressure, I would reframe that into we are concerned with the degree of denial activity that we see from some of the health plans. We think it’s excessive and inappropriate. And we continue to work on our appropriate documentation, both for us and obviously with Conifer for all of our clients in order to push back on the volume of clinical denials on the basis of having excellent documentation and we think that’s the right path out of that.
Operator: Thank you. We reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I’d like to turn the floor back over to Saum for any further or closing comments.
Saum Sutaria: Yes. So, Justin stole my thunder, but I kept this until the end because I was worried Dan might walk out if we thank him too early from this phone call. But I want to thank Dan as well not only for being an outstanding CFO, an exceptional colleague. But I would tell you, he is the picture of integrity and honesty that’s a role model for every CFO that exists in this country. So, thank you, Dan.
Daniel Cancelmi: Appreciate the kind remarks, Saum.
Saum Sutaria: All right. With that, we’ll wrap up. Thank you, everybody.
Operator: Thank you. That does conclude today’s teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.
