None of that is certain. All of that requires an ordinate amount of work on everybody’s far clinically, locally, and operationally. And then we have the timing of acquisitions which, as you point out, has some effect. You roll that all together, and we’ve given you the guidance that we’ve given you. We think we can do better than the bottom, and we think we’ll be somewhere in that range. And we’ll update as the year goes on according to how things are going if we feel like we need to guide the market in a particular direction. So that’s really all I can tell you right now. We’re early in the year. We’re off to a reasonably good start, albeit a little weather in January, but I think we can overcome that. We plan to overcome it as the year goes on.
I wish I could tell you more about bucket, but it doesn’t really work that way when you’re in real life.
Operator: [Operator Instructions]. We’ll take our next question from Mike Petusky with Barrington Research.
Mike Petusky: Good morning. Can I actually get the — I don’t think you guys mentioned the actual payer mix for the quarter.
Carey Hendrickson: Sure. Yeah. For the quarter, it was pretty similar. We had about 48% commercial, 32% [Technical Difficulty] workers’ comp, and then the other three, Medicare, personal injury, self, they make up the rest.
Mike Petusky: Carey, I’m sorry, at least on my end, you broke up on workers’ comp. How much was workers’ comp?
Carey Hendrickson: Workers’ comp was 9.5% and then — so 48% commercial, 32% Medicare, 9.5% for workers comp and then the other categories make up the rest.
Mike Petusky: Okay. And then I guess maybe for Chris or somebody else in the room. On workers’ comp, I know you guys have expressed maybe over the last two to four quarters some optimism around possibly changing the trajectory there and getting that back up into the low double-digit range. Is that optimism still there or is that just a tough needle to move? Because at one time you did have that probably 12%, 14% of overall revenue.
Christopher Reading: Yeah, it’s not dead yet, Mike, but it’s a tough lift. And when you’re growing, and we’ve been able to grow the whole business, it’s tough to outgrow just one category, but we’ve done a lot of training. We’ve signed a lot of new contracts that should drive additional volume. Our partners have focused on it. Eric, do you want to weigh in?
Eric Williams: Yeah, there were a lot of new agreements that were signed and a lot of those took place at the tail end, late Q3 and Q4. So we actually did see a pickup in Q4 last year. In Q4, work comp was 9.2% of our mix, so up slightly from where we are. And I think the work and the things that we executed on late in ’23 are going to pay dividends to us in 2024. And there’s a handful of additional agreements that are in process that will also get executed as we go through first quarter into second quarter that will pay dividends for us we believe in the back part of the year. So this is an area that we continue to really focus hard on, not just from a volume perspective, but from a rate perspective as well. And we did get a nice pickup in rate year over year for work comp business.
So opportunity there, but as Chris pointed out, when the whole business is growing, it’s really hard to out check those other categories on a significant basis. But we are making progress here, and we expect better things in 2024.
Mike Petusky: Okay. All right. Great. And then just a quick question, I guess, on the lack of action in Washington and just the CMS cuts this year. I know, Chris, that you’re very connected and a leader in the industry. I mean, is there an argument to go back to CMS? If you look at ’25 and essentially say, look, we’ve really taken it for the last few years here and essentially make the argument that there was no relief in ’24, and that this streak should end at this point? I mean, has there been any talk I guess within the industry that that there’s got to be an end to this?
Christopher Reading: Yeah, there’s a lot of talk in the industry. I would tell you CMS is a frustratung place. We seem to have a lot more empathy in Congress. We’re actually going to be in DC, Nick and I, Nick who serves as our Executive Director for APTQI, who also works with us and a lot of our member companies. CDOs will be in Washington in another month or so. And we’ll meet with MedPAC to talk about some of their scoring and their lack of ability to score true savers and assist on like, for instance, fall prevention is a saver. We know that if you can prevent a fall, we know measurably what the downstream savings look like in there, spectacular level of savings. Based on the rules, again, we’re talking about federal government now, and everything’s got a million rules associated with, based on the rules, MedPAC isn’t able to score saver as a saver.
They have to score that the coster. It’s like it’s a new [Technical Difficulty] in the prevention of a massive downstream expense. It doesn’t make sense. And so there’s a lot of coordination that needs to occur between the law-making side and the rule-making side of government and CMS. So yeah, we’re going to continue to beat the drum. We’re going to continue to work with the APTA and APTQI and all the constituents and all the good people that I get to work with in those two organizations to push hard. And I think we will come out the other side and be okay. To say it’s not frustrating would be an understatement. I mean, it’s been a frustrating period, but I think in everyone’s heart, they know that physical therapy and statistically according to a lot of good studies that are out right now, physical therapy should be the entry point for musculoskeletal care.
