Larry Solow: No, go ahead.
Carey Hendrickson: Yeah. And I think as we look at ’24, you asked about that. I mean, I think we can — if we do somewhere between — just from a math perspective, right? If Medicare is going to be down 3.5%, if we do 1.5% to 2% of an increase in these other categories combined, that would make our rate next year flat. And I think we can do that or maybe even a little better.
Larry Solow: Got it. Okay. And then on the CMS rate cut, I guess, 3.6%, it sounds like there will be no relief on that. Congress is probably not going to get together in a couple weeks to do anything there. But Chris, can you just remind us — I know these cuts elevate the physician fee schedule and shifts more to the general practitioner while maintaining budget neutrality. But what’s the outlook going forward? Are we pretty much at the end of that? Do you expect more cuts potentially in ’25? How do you guys see that?
Christopher Reading: Yeah, I don’t know Larry. I mean, trying to predict what CMS does or the federal government does is a little bit of a hard job. But I think we’re at the end, and I think we’ll get back into a more normal pattern as we go forward with small increases every year. I think people understand that they’re picking on their own guys and that this isn’t sustainable to three sequential years of cuts. And that’s what I believe, so we’ll see what happens.
Operator: We’ll take our next question from Joanna Gajuk with Bank of America.
Joanna Gajuk: Hi, good morning. Thank you so much for taking the questions here. So I guess a couple of things. When it comes to these assets that you outlined, so you listed a contribution from deals that you expect to close later this year or this year through the first half, maybe July. I listed out one of the items, but it’s one of the last items on that list. So should we read into this as implying the assets you’re talking about here versus the $5.3 million, I guess when you have to overcome year over year that the deal contribution from those features is kind of smaller item? So are you willing to quantify that or quantify some of these other things you listed there as assets?
Carey Hendrickson: Yeah, Joanna, as you can appreciate, there’s a lot of puts and takes, and we didn’t provide specifics about any of the items and their dollar amounts and impact. Just know that there are things — and some we’ll get more on than we would anticipate and then others we may not be quite as much on. So we didn’t want to specifically talk about dollars in each one of those items. I will say on the acquisitions, I’ve talked a little bit about that in here, just that these are ones that are in kind of our normal course, if you will, between $1 million and $3 million of EBITDA for a total enterprise basis. And then we are going to have our ownership percentage of those, which typically is somewhere around 60%, 70%, 80%.
And so I think you can get some feel for what the amounts are there related to that. But it will have — we believe we’ll have ones beyond what we have put in the guidance beyond the first half of the year that will close later in the year. And those can have impact. Their impact won’t be as significant, though, because the later in the year you go, the less impact those have in ’24.
Joanna Gajuk: Okay. That’s helpful. And I guess on the guidance, I guess, how should we think about — what do you assume essentially for volumes here? So I appreciate you highlighted that Q1 will have a tough comp, but I guess what was the same-store, I guess, volume growth for ’23, the full year? And then how do you think about volumes, same-store volumes that is growing for the full-year ’24?
Carey Hendrickson: Yes. I mean we think we can — we hope to have strong volume, really. That’s going to be — that’s one of those factors that we have an amount in the plan. And it’s a nice mid-single digit kind of growth number, 3% to 5% probably growth for our existing clinics. And we think that’s achievable in 2024.
Joanna Gajuk: Okay, thank you. And last one, a follow-up on the discussion around pricing. Good to see the commercial traction there. Can you talk about workers’ comp? I guess two things, what rate increases you’re getting there? And also, the mix, are you improving or increasing the workers’ comp mix? And I guess that will be helping that average rate as well, right?
Carey Hendrickson: Yeah, the mix has stayed pretty consistent. The good news is we’re growing the other categories well too. So workers’ comp is growing. It had really nice increases, but so is commercial, so is Medicare. We’ve had a just a lot of patient volume growth across the mix of categories. So mix hasn’t changed that much. And the workers’ comp rate, though, is continuing to improve. It’s higher in ’23 than it was in ’22. And we’re hoping it’ll continue to be like that as we go forward. We’re negotiating rate on workers’ comp just like we are in others now as well.
Joanna Gajuk: If I may just squeeze a very last one, sorry about that, and thank you for taking the question. The comment on margins, so these were gross margin when you talk about keeping this level, maybe even expanding. Any comment around the corporate level costs? How should we think about that number going forward? I guess it ticked up a little bit in Q4. I guess maybe this is not the $13.9 million corporate office cost. So how should we think about that number going forward? Thank you.
