Citing a “rapidly evolving” home health industry, Amedisys Chairman and CEO Paul Kusserow outlined an aggressive strategy to Wall Street analysts Thursday aimed at driving company growth.
“Change creates opportunities,” Kusserow said about the industry during an earnings call. “Accelerated change creates dynamic opportunities. We’re in a time of rapid change.”
Baton Rouge, LA-based Amedisys’ strategy in 2023 includes recruitment and retention of clinical staff, overall growth, clinical optimization and automation, and expanding the reach of hospital-at-home division Contessa.
While demand for home care services is accelerating due partly to aging demographics, Kuserow said the supply of clinical staff is falling far short of demand. The company stepped up recruitment efforts in recent months — increasing clinical staff 26% in the second half of last year — and simplified administrative processes, so caregivers can spend more time with patients than on paperwork.
More clinicians will allow Amedisys to care for more clients, but the company also needs to make sure revenue growth keeps pace, according to Kusserow. As the Medicare Advantage plans overtake fee-for-service plans, he said Amedisys will focus on developing innovative contracts with private insurers that will pay better.
“If plans don’t want to partner with us on reasonable terms, we will cancel contracts and defer our capacity to strategic partners who value our results,” Kusserow bluntly stated.
The new strategy comes one day after Amedisys announced it was selling off its personal care business to Houseworks, LLC and has partnered with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee to offer palliative care through Contessa. While Contessa has struggled since Amedisys acquired it in 2021 and sustained a $39 million operating loss last year, Kusserow said the prospect of more partnerships and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ extension of the hospital-at-home waiver program all bode well for Contesssa.
“Our view is that we are likely to see an acceleration of the proliferation of high-acuity in-home programs in years to come,” he said.
In the last three months of 2022, Baton Rouge, LA-based Amedisys earned $1.16 a share on revenues of $562 million compared to $1.18 a share on revenues of $559.3 million during the same period in 2021. The company earned $5.01 per share on revenues of $2.22 billion for 2022 compared to $5.95 a share on revenues of $2.21 billion in 2021.
