HCA Healthcare grew its outpatient caseload 3 percent year over year in the second quarter of 2019, which contributed to the company posting $12.6 billion in revenues for the quarter.
Despite that, Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare missed analysts' estimates for revenue and earnings per share. Seeking Alpha transcribed the company's earnings call, where CEO Sam Hazen offered insights into the company and its outpatient efforts.
On the company's health: "The strategic investments we are making to expand the inpatient and outpatient capacity within our networks and improve our clinical capabilities create more opportunity for patients to access high-quality convenient care in an HCA Healthcare facility."
On competition: "I think generally speaking, most of our competitors are trying to do a lot of what we are trying to do. They are trying to attract physicians. They are trying to create outpatient capabilities that are responsive to the markets and so forth. And so from that standpoint, those [areas are] won and lost, in my opinion, [due to] execution. It comes down to detailing your business and your relationships with physicians and so forth and then creating a compelling offering for the patient."
On HCA's ASC caseloads, which decreased 0.6 percent for the quarter: "When you look at our tier 1 volumes, they were down significantly. That's some ophthalmology cases, some pain cases and so forth. That's what influenced the metric for the quarter … we feel pretty good about what we are doing with our surgical growth initiatives and our quality and investment initiatives inside of our [operating rooms], and we have had a fairly good pattern of growth.
On inpatient cases and overall case volume growth: "Inpatient surgeries were the metric of concern for us. They were slightly down. Flattish, if you will, domestically but down internationally. That created a little bit of pressure. We will have to continue to work on that and monitor that as we move forward, but all in all, our surgical activity on the outpatient side, I think, is yielding pretty good results for the company."
Note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity.
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