On July 1st, we deployed the third wave of our affiliated health systems onto our enterprise resource planning platform. The initiative, which we internally refer to as Project Empower, now supports more than half of our hospitals and will be fully deployed by the end of the year. This investment is yielding deeper insights into our business functions, and we expect to identify opportunities for additional standardization, expense management, and value creation as our experience with this enhanced operational tool matures.

Jul 25, 2024 / receipt, needs a key / Tim Henschen, CEO | earnings call 2024-07-25 | transcript 6cc36ce9-5e97-4d27-8f8d-db10ec8bf8d4 | chars 6424-6952 | segment 6

We expect to accelerate our growth initiatives, strengthen our workforce, and advance safety and quality while leveraging expense management to drive positive financial results and free cash flow.

Feb 16, 2023 / receipt, needs a key / Tim Hinson, other | earnings call 2023-02-16 | transcript 06c1e989-b281-4be0-9ebd-1a61332ecaad | chars 17245-17441 | segment 16

Moving through the third quarter, we did see volumes, especially surgery and outpatient visits, picked up by mid-August, coinciding with the end of summer travel, return to school, and more normal schedules.

Oct 26, 2022 / receipt, needs a key / Tim Hinchin, CEO | earnings call 2022-10-26 | transcript 9f79cc3a-2dcd-49f0-8a99-aeb778c8dbf2 | chars 4834-5041 | segment 5

Looking out longer term, we believe the stronger return of deferred care, the execution of our growth and strategic initiatives, our successful expense management, and continued focus on cash flow and capital structure management will allow the company to achieve its medium term financial goals, which includes targets for 16% plus EBITDA margin, positive annual free cash flow generation, and reducing our leverage below five times.

Jul 28, 2022 / receipt, needs a key / Kevin Hammond, CFO | earnings call 2022-07-28 | transcript 55cfec7c-9614-4a0e-b3e5-220beaca6e5e | chars 17429-17863 | segment 17

We continue to effectively manage our non-labor related expenses. This would include supply costs as well as vendor related expenses, including insurance, utilities, rent, and a number of other fixed costs. Due to benefits from our margin improvement program efforts and focused expense management, we have held absolute dollars relatively consistent over the past six quarters.

Jul 28, 2022 / receipt, needs a key / Kevin Hammond, CFO | earnings call 2022-07-28 | transcript 55cfec7c-9614-4a0e-b3e5-220beaca6e5e | chars 13960-14338 | segment 13

On the expense side, a number of things. Contract labor we believe will moderate as traveling nurses will come back into more of an employed arrangement. That will continue to take pressure off the contract labor line. And we are continuing to see improvement in that, albeit at a slower pace than we had expected.

Jul 28, 2022 / receipt, needs a key / Tim, other | earnings call 2022-07-28 | transcript 55cfec7c-9614-4a0e-b3e5-220beaca6e5e | chars 28338-28652 | segment 28

In terms of length of stay improvement, we've mentioned previously in prior quarter and at a few investor conferences, our focus on improving our capacity optimization and We've stood up a centralized utilization review program, standard case management protocols have been rolling out throughout the first half of the year. I believe we're getting really solid traction on those initiatives. As you pointed out, it frees up certainly some critical capacity, helps us take out some of those variable expenses on staffing if we're more efficient with how we're operating on the length of stay.

Jul 28, 2022 / receipt, needs a key / Tim, other | earnings call 2022-07-28 | transcript 55cfec7c-9614-4a0e-b3e5-220beaca6e5e | chars 35728-36320 | segment 36

So really, hiring has not been our biggest challenge. We just have to certainly work harder on retention and, again, not having people feel that contract labor or going to a travel agency is the best career choice for them. There's other intrinsic value to being part of the core healthcare team besides just the rate of pay. Those things that we're focusing on are retention and bonus programs, advancing our educational opportunities for all of our employees, not just nursing. And then really putting more energy into caring for the caregiver and some of the emotional support that is so critical as we've weathered the last several waves of COVID.

Feb 17, 2022 / receipt, needs a key / Tim, other | earnings call 2022-02-17 | transcript ed308151-5b84-4eae-a298-6f0b55d4c414 | chars 34760-35411 | segment 35